O’Neill names his 23
Darren Randolph, Keiren Westwood, Shay Given, John O’Shea, Ciaran Clark, Robbie Brady, Seamus Coleman, Richard Keogh, Shane Duffy, Stephen Ward, Cyrus Christie, James McCarthy, Jeff Hendrick, James McClean, Glenn Whelan, Stephen Quinn, Wes Hoolahan, Aiden McGeady, David Meyler, Jonathan Walters, Shane Long, Daryl Murphy, Robbie Keane.
Martin O’Neill named the 23 men on whom the hopes of a nation rest late last night, just after the Republic of Ireland bid adieu to home shores with an uninspiring 2-1 defeat to Belarus at Turner’s Cross.
It was Ireland's final warm-up game before the European Championships and until the arrival of a raft of second half substitutes the fixture felt like a testimonial. Ken Early was in Cork to see Ireland lose to a side who were recently beaten 3-0 by Northern Ireland, he writes: "But you couldn't help but worry about what might happen if this level of play was repeated as Euro 2016.
“Turner’s Cross is overlooked by a couple of dozen houses which would command at least a partial view of the pitch. Ireland were effectively playing in these people’s back gardens but looking at the windows you could see some of them had drawn the curtains.”
Gordon D’Arcy
In his column today Gordon D'Arcy looks back at last weekend's Pro 12 final, and suggests the national side can learn a lot from Connacht following their famous win over Leinster, he writes: "Had Connacht not won this match they could have become like so many teams that get to a final and lose; drifting away disillusioned and never able to recreate the essential binding spirit.
“But after Saturday they have created belief in their system which can be built on. Because they know it works no matter what comes at them.”
Darragh O’Sé
Meanwhile in his colum Darragh O'Sé looks at what is needed to retain the All-Ireland: "Two things are key to winning back-to-back All-Irelands. One of them is obvious to everyone, the second maybe not. The first is that you have to have the right players at the right stage of their career. In 2007, I was 32. Paul Galvin was 28, Colm Cooper was 25, Declan O'Sullivan was 23. Just about everybody else was somewhere in between. Nobody was too young, nobody was too old. No passengers. Nobody that had to be minded. The perfect age profile.
“The second one is that I think you have to get a jolt somewhere along the way. Something that applies the jump-leads to get the hunger going again. If you turn up in the same shape as you were the year before, that’s not going to be good enough. You need something to surprise you or unsettle you or in some way make you hell-bent on reaching a new height.”
