Portsmouth striker Ronan Curtis may well be ruled out of the squad for Ireland’s European Championship games Gibraltar and Georgia on Thursday after a freak accident resulted in an injury that required surgery on one of his fingers.
Mick McCarthy is expected to trim back the preliminary list of 38 players he named for the games last week when he appears at a sponsorship announcement in Dublin on Thursday afternoon and Portsmouth boss Kenny Jackett has suggested that 22 year-old Curtis, who has two goals in his last three appearances for the club, is unlikely to have recovered in time to join up with the squad at the weekend.
“He had a nasty accident in the morning when he caught his finger in a door and it’s pretty nasty,” said Jackett after Tuesday’s 3-2 win at Walsall which Curtis missed. “It could be some time out because it’s quite serious. He’s had some surgery and I’ve seen the pictures – it looks quite gruesome.
“We’ll have to see how he is and hope he’ll be okay, but he certainly won’t be back for Saturday. It’s a very sensitive area.”
The Irish squad will meet up on Sunday ahead of that evening’s annual awards in RTE. McCarthy has said that he will only bring 23 players to Gibraltar next Thursday. Newport’s Padraig Amond and James Collins of Luton Town are amongst the strikers who will be hoping to travel after having both been named in a senior international squad for the first time.
