FOOTBALL DAILY: 'A quiet confidence in the group growing together... ' | Ireland on the cusp of something special as thousands of fans begin their influx on Prague
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What updates are there from the Republic of Ireland camp ahead of the World Cup playoffs?
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Hello and welcome along to Tuesday's Football Daily. I'm Phil Egan. Coming up today, we'll get the latest from the Irish camp with John Egan calling on the thousands of travelling Irish fans to make a difference on Thursday. John O'Shea says that Boston Lowell is fit and ready to go, despite what his club manager Mark Robbins thinks. And Nathan Collins gives some background as to why he had to miss a few games at Brentford due to injury. But first today, Ireland trained again this morning ahead of Thursday night's crucial World Cup play-off semi-final against the Czech Republic in Prague. The squad will fly out to the Czech capital this evening and train at the stadium tomorrow morning, one day out from the match.
No new fitness concerns were reported as Troy Parra trained with the group after arriving yesterday morning. Assistant coach John O'Shea says there were some slight worries ahead of the last weekend of fixtures, but training yesterday reminded him of what it's like ahead of a cup final.
Listen, the way it works for the weekend when the boys meet up, you're nervous for as soon as the games start Friday. And obviously we had a bit Friday evening to, well, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday really. But listen, the boys are in a good place. Training today, it was almost reminding me of that cup final scenario. Everyone's wanting to get in the team, the intensity. The noise and the atmosphere around the boys is brilliant. I think it's the confidence, quiet confidence and the group growing together. It's great to see, but also there's a lot of hard work to come.
Boston Lawal has trained despite not playing for his club Stoke since February. His manager, Mark Robbins, was critical of the decision to include him in the Ireland squad, saying that he's broken down with injuries three times this season.
No, listen, I think I can understand a club manager's predicament in that sense. But also, you have to fully respect the players' idea and the conversations that Boston's had with the boss and obviously the awareness we have in terms of his fitness levels. Obviously, he's fit. If he was injured, he wouldn't be here. So I think that's the case. We have to move on from that now. We'll take care of him like we take care of all the players. And if he's able to help us on Thursday night, he will help us. Yeah, your ideal scenario is you're trying to get him to replicate certain things, but every individual player will have that characteristic that may be a little bit different. But it'll be the same idea in the sense of what we're looking for, certain players in certain positions.
And listen, they'll have known whatever players we do select, they will know from the roles and the repetition from team meetings, from trainings, what's required from certain positions. So hopefully that'll be straightforward again.
Josh Cullen will miss the games in this camp due to an ACL injury. He played five out of the six qualifiers, only missing one due to suspension.
How is Nathan Collins addressing midfield concerns following Josh Cullen's injury?
So Lowell could be an option in midfield, despite not making a senior international appearance to date. O'Shea wants the players to use Cullen's absence as motivation.
But listen, as we know, Josh was growing into that role massively, but hopefully the boys can use that inspiration for him to be a nice pick-up for him as well to go and win games.
With question marks over the make-up of the midfield, Nathan Collins isn't worried because, as he points out, they have played plenty of games without the Burnley skipper before.
We're prepared. We have a lot of good players, a lot of good midfielders, anyone that can step in there and have a lot of faith and belief in the squad that whoever does play there will do their job and they know their job inside out.
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