Rory O'Connor

He must be one of the most talked about and scrutinized Irish sports people of all time.

And he's what, is he 22 now?

21.

I'm done.

But I feel for him, I have to say, because I think if he was born in England, raised in England, and was having this career, no one would be paying any attention to him, and he'd be making his mistakes off Broadway.

Except in Rome, where he would be.

Sorry, yeah, absolutely, but even the English media wouldn't be picking up on what... There's an element of being in Rome, and obviously that's a goldfish bowl, and he wants to succeed there and everything, but

it's the fact that it's getting picked up back home and his family and he's probably getting whatsapps about it and stuff and to see what your man said to you again and he's like apparently he's very happy you know you hear he's very happy over there and he likes the life um and he's definitely seems to be growing into it and i'm guilty like i've got roma and stuff yeah as one of my favorites on live score i want to know what's going on when i read everything that's written about him so i don't you know i understand why this

media um why it's happening it's how people are interested and it's important to us because he is such you know his own chairman two years ago three years ago brighton said he was going to be 100 million pound player incredible pressure to put on a 19 year old even if he was a prodigious talent and it's pretty understandable that he's drifted a little bit and he's he's it hasn't all happened no one's career is linear unless you're

Really, really exceptional.

But I do feel for him that everything he does, I can't imagine living that life.

But then I can't imagine the rewards that he gets as well of being a Roma centre forward.

How good must it feel to score a goal for Roma, to have the adulation of the Roma crowd?

And I hope it goes right for him.

I hope that even the fact that they have a couple of extra strikers, it might limit his game time to some degree, but it might also take Gasparini's eye off him, or even the Roma press will be scrutinising someone else.

He might be able to just learn his trade a little bit more and become a better player as a result of it.

Because Ireland don't need him to be a £100 million striker.

Like, Troy Parrott's doing pretty well, you know, having made all those mistakes in a slightly less high-profile way at Excelsior and places like that.

you know even if it's the same jersey without the sponsor on it because it's a world cup you know that may be what they do I think it's the like whatever with the 105 grown up one the 80 quid 85 quid kid one that's extortionate and like you know I did look into you know if you're talking about an association that needs to make money they probably should have some jerseys for sale before Christmas which I looked into let's go for the week of blue Monday to release our jersey yeah

Even if they could have put cut price old ones out would have done the trick.