Republic of Ireland manager Martin O'Neill says Stephen Ward may yet feature in Sunday's vital European Championship qualifying game against Poland at the Aviva Stadium despite having spent the bulk of this week's training sessions as a spectator.
The Burnley left back took part with the rest of the squad at Malahide this morning and the manager insists that he is still in contention. Prior to making any call on it, he says he will speak with the player and weigh up how many of his team he can afford to have featuring without having been fully fit and involved at club level lately.
“Well, he’s trained today and James McClean has trained so we’re fine,” he said. “They’ve come through it and they didn’t complain at the end, although sometimes it’s maybe an hour or two after training that they feel it but they’re not too bad.
“I’ll have a word with him (Ward) now. This was the first bit of work that he’d done and we’ll see. Sometimes players can get through on adrenalin. You wouldn’t want to be going in with four or five players not having done much but Stephen knows himself now; if he thinks he can make it then that will be good news for us.”
There are, O’Neill says “still places up for grabs”, with Saturday’s training still to go but the manager insists that the team he picks will be one selected with winning in mind.
“Naturally we’re at home and so the onus is on us to try to get forward to try to win the game and that’s what we’re going to try to do, but there are a number of games left in the competition. It’s a tough old group we’re in, but we’re going for it.”
The manager must cut his 28 players to 23 in advance of the game but he says he will not tell the remaining players who will actually play until the build-up to kick-off on Sunday. Whoever it ends up being, he says, can expect a challenging game from a side that has made an enviable start to the campaign.
“Yeah, 10 points from 12 . . .they’ve got off to a great, great start. The win against Germany was fantastic, followed up with the draw against Scotland and then winning out in Georgia so it’s been a really great start for them and they must have loads of confidence.” But, he says, “I’m always confident where our team is concerned.”
