Gavin Cooney

IRELAND’S WORLD CUP play-off against Czechia is still three months away, yet there is already some bad news piling up on the long runway, with confirmation this week that Josh Cullen has ruptured his ACL and will miss around nine months of action.

It’s a shattering blow for Cullen, but it also creates a major headache for Heimir Hallgrimsson. 

Josh Cullen is injured. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Cullen made his debut under Mick McCarthy but has been central to the Irish team since the 2022 World Cup qualifying campaign under Stephen Kenny. Neither Kenny nor Hallgrimsson have ever left Cullen out of a competitive game for which he has been available, and so Cullen has started all but four of Ireland’s last 36 competitive matches.

(In that time he missed two Nations League games through injury, while he was suspended for a pair of home games against Armenia, one in the Nations League and the second in last year’s World Cup qualifiers.)

But Ireland must now plot a route to the World Cup without him. 

Ireland have lots of midfield options, but concerningly few that are a direct replacement for Cullen, and his importance as accentuated in the wretched defeat away to Armenia last September. Ireland were already trailing in Yerevan when Cullen was substituted after 70 minutes, and replaced by Killian Phillips.

Hallgrimsson explained afterwards he brought in Phillips as he wanted more energy for his side, but Phillips lacks Cullen’s positional discipline at the base of midfield, and the consequence was a total loss of control, with Ireland giving thanks to Caoimhín Kelleher and a razor-thin offside call for losing by only one goal. (The manager’s own review of that decision is evident in the fact Phillips hasn’t been included in an Ireland squad since.) 

Will Smallbone replaced Cullen against Armenia at home, but he is currently sidelined with a serious hamstring injury suffered at the end of October, at which point his prognosis was “months” out of action. That means he will likely be battling for match-fitness by the time the Czechia play-off rolls around.

Jayson Molumby, initially omitted for that September window only to instantly return to the starting team from October onwards, will now grow in importance for March. And while Cullen is out, Jason Knight will return to the squad if fit, having missed the October and November windows. Knight has remarkable energy and stamina, but there are doubts as to whether he has the same positional discipline as Cullen. 

Another option is Jack Taylor, who has lately forced himself back into the reckoning at Ipswich in a deeper midfield role. Hallgrimsson preferred to use Taylor in a more advanced midfield role last year, though he started alongside Cullen at the base of midfield for the 2-0 win at home to Portugal in November. 

Killian Phillips has meanwhile continued to play regularly for St Mirren in Scotland, but seems to have carried the can for the Yerevan debacle and is presently out of the picture. He is another of Ireland’s midfield options who look better suited to more advanced roles, along with the likes of Andrew Moran, Mark Sykes, Jamie McGrath and, most obviously, Finn Azaz. 

For all his inconsistencies, Azaz proved a vital creative hub in Ireland’s World Cup qualifying campaign, and though he swapped to a deep midfield role while Ireland went chasing their impossible dream away to Hungary in November, moving him to Cullen’s role from the start of a game does not look feasible. 

This is Hallgrimsson’s conundrum: while his tried-and-trusted options don’t fit stylistically, the better stylistic fits are not tried-and-trusted.

They include the uncapped Bosun Lawal, who has been playing the bulk of his Stoke City minutes at centre-half but whom the Irish staff have been trying to play in midfield. Injury scuppered his opportunities in October and November having been named for Ireland’s first two World Cup qualifiers. 

Hallgrimsson took a look at John Patrick Finn in last summer’s friendly window – handing him a couple of minutes’ worth of a debut against Luxembourg – but has deemed him not yet ready for the step-up. Finn has unhelpfully gone off the boil since that game, and has completed 90 minutes only once for Reims in the French second division. 

Elsewhere, Hallgrimsson is aware of former Irish U21 captain Joe Hodge, but he has not yet called him up to a squad and Hodge is struggling for minutes with Tondela, who themselves are struggling in the Portuguese top flight. 

A more experienced option thus far overlooked by Hallgrimsson is Alan Browne, now playing regularly in central midfield for Championship high-flyers Middlesbrough. Browne hasn’t been seen in an Ireland squad since the very first window of Hallgrimsson’s reign in September 2024, and that was a squad largely picked by assistants John O’Shea and Paddy McCarthy. He is playing at ‘Boro alongside a much less heralded option in Alex Gilbert, uncapped at senior level having played six times for the Irish U21s. 

Coventry (left) makes his senior debut. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

Thus perhaps the player to watch is former Irish U21 captain, Conor Coventry. Coventry made his senior debut off the bench for the final 22 minutes against Portugal, and is the closest stylistic match Hallgrimsson has to Cullen.

There are further similarities: like Cullen, Coventry is English-born, came through West Ham’s academy and landed at Charlton, for whom Coventry has been a regular in the Championship this season. Without Cullen, no Irish midfielder is playing at a higher level than the Championship, and no Irish midfielder has played more minutes in England’s second-tier so far this season than Coventry. 

Perhaps his first senior international start will come in Prague, and Ireland’s biggest game for almost a decade.