EMMET MALONEon how far the young Everton player has come since a freak accident in Malahide in 2010

FOR MOST new arrivals in the Irish international camp the most daunting part of linking up with Giovanni Trapattoni’s squad for the first time is the need to sing for your new team-mates. For Shane Duffy, though, when the news of his call-up came last week there was the prospect of a return to Gannon Park in Malahide where, almost two years ago, a freak accident after he went up for a corner in a training game, came close to ending his life.

The northerner had to undergo emergency surgery in May 2010 to restore the blood supply to his liver but subsequently made a remarkable recovery.

Yesterday, he was back, holding his own on the same pitch with pretty much all of the players who have earned Ireland a place at this summer’s European Championships in Poland. It was all, he admits, in more ways than one, “a bit weird”.

Duffy’s huge potential was apparent when he was called in for the training camp that included the game in which his collision with goalkeeper Adrian Walsh of the Irish amateur team landed him in theatre.

Now, however, he is beginning to fulfil it with an impressive half season at Scunthorpe followed in recent weeks by a growing number of opportunities back at Everton, where he has not looked at all out of place.

Maintain this progress, he knows, and he may yet, come June, land himself a place on one of the game’s great stages.

“It’s a long way away at the minute, to be honest,” he says of the prospect of making it on board the flight to Poland, “I’m just thinking about my club form. But it’s a dream to be here and if that did come off it would be a dream come true.”

Duffy insists his ambition for these few days is merely to “enjoy every minute and do my best to impress,” but Trapattoni has said he is likely to feature at some point tomorrow night, a prospect made all the more likely by the departure yesterday from the squad of Stephen Kelly and absence from the outset of Richard Dunne.

“They’re big shoes to fill,” he says at the thought of it. “He [Dunne] is a big character and a big player for Ireland. Hopefully as I mature and get older I can grow into the role that he’s performed for the country . . . I’d be proud of that.”

It would certainly complete quite a comeback for the 20-year-old from Galliagh in Derry. He wondered at one stage if he would ever play again and in his first game back, a friendly against Sligo Rovers, ventured forward, he recalls, for his first corner with some trepidation.

“But when it was gone,” he says, “I never looked back.”

With anything like the luck he’s due, he’ll be saying the same of his international debut.