DARYL HORGAN BELIEVES his only chance of being summoned for international duty is by switching to a club in England.
The winger, who netted five goals in the league for Dundalk in May, is one of a number of players from the League of Ireland that have been touted as possible international players in the future.
However, Martin O’Neill seems reluctant to include any home-based players in his squad and Horgan knows he must move to England if he wants to play forhis country, but admits there have been no firm offers from an English club thus far.
“I think there’s a couple of rumours but that’s all they are,” he said as he collected the SSE Airtricity/SWAI Player of the Month award for May.
“I’ve heard nothing, there’s been nothing put in front of me or put to the club so right now it’s nothing.
“If something comes of it we’ll see how it gets on but at the moment it’s absolutely nothing and I’m just focused on football with Dundalk and winning games.”
The former Cork City attacker also recognises that any move across the channel would deprive him of the opportunity to play in Europe.
“If I do go over to England, I won’t be playing in Europe. I might not be challenging for titles, well definitely not the Premier League title, so that’s the difference to over here,” he said.
You probably are taking that step up if you do go over to maybe a Championship or a top-end League One club, or obviously if you’re very lucky to get to a Premier League club.”
Horgan acknowledges that while the League of Ireland may have some players that are international quality, there is still a gap between the domestic league and the English game. However, he still believes Martin O’Neill should include Irish-based players in his squad.
“Maybe the league isn’t professional enough, I think it is personally. The way we trained in Cork, we were professional, everyone did things right. The way we do it in Dundalk, it’s all done right and professional,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say physically we’d be too far away, maybe a small bit more. I don’t know really to be brutally honest with you, but it would be great to see just even if it was to come to it, to give players a chance.
Prove they can’t do it, or prove they can. It’s never come to a stage where lads have been called into the squad with the basis of being in the squad.”
Dundalk have been drawn against BATE Borisov in the Champions League second qualifying round, and although they will go in as massive underdogs against the Champions League regulars, Horgan thinks they can get a result if they play to their potential.
“If we play like we can play, I can’t see why we couldn’t get a result. It is going to be very, very difficult but if we play our normal game and play the way we can, anything could happen,” he said.
The pressure is off a small bit. You can kind of play your normal game a bit more even. We’d be used to a lot of teams coming up and sitting back and that’s difficult to break down, whereas we think we’re able to play a few different ways.
“We can break, counter at pace, and we can control the ball if we need those spells and stuff like that. So there’s going to be a lot of game management involved but I think we’ll be able to do that.”
The Galway native says his side will also take heart from their impressive showing against Hajduk Split, a Europa League qualifier which they lost 3-2 on aggregate last year.
“Everyone was saying the tie was dead and buried when we went to Split last year and we had them under the cosh for the last 15 or 20 minutes where we were well on top and we probably should have won it 3-1 to be perfectly honest,” he said.
“We had the chances to go through, it just didn’t happen. Everyone said that going to Split it would be next to impossible to get anything, whereas these boys are probably a step up again.”