ALAN BROWNE AND Jeff Hendrick have shaken off their respective injury problems and are set to be included in the Republic of Ireland squad for the June Euro 2024 qualifiers against Greece and Gibraltar.
Stephen Kenny will announce his squad for the games at lunchtime tomorrow.
Browne has not played since April with a knee injury, while Hendrick picked up an injury after his season-long loan with Reading in the Championship ended. Both missed an Irish training camp in Bristol last week, but are fit for inclusion in tomorrow’s squad.
Seamus Coleman, Andrew Omobamidele, and Callum Robinson are all out of the double-header with injury, while there is a doubt around Chiedozie Ogbene, who missed last week’s camp with a hamstring injury sustained on the final day of the Championship season.
Also unlikely to be included is Ryan Manning, who missed the Bristol camp as he is managing an injury. Everton striker Tom Cannon – who scored eight goals in 20 games on loan at Preston this season – missed the camp with tonsillitis, but Hull’s Sean McLoughlin, Millwall defender Danny McNamara, and Shamrock Rovers’ Neil Farrugia were all involved with the senior squad for the first time.
Given the respective absences of Omobamidele and Coleman, McLoughlin and McNamara are in a good position to force their way into the squad.
First-choice right wing-back Matt Doherty has only played eight minutes of La Liga action for Atletico Madrid since Ireland’s loss to France, but is expected to start the final game of the season against Villarreal on Sunday.
The four-day Bristol get-together was for the benefit of the Irish players in the Championship and League One, whose regular seasons ended on 8 May, fully 39 days before the clash with Greece in Athens.
Ireland were undercooked going into a Nations League game away to Armenia last June after a similarly long lay-off, so the Bristol camp was arranged to avoid a repeat scenario. The entire final squad travel to a training camp in Antalya, Turkey next Monday, where preparations will include an internal game before the flight to Athens.
Ireland lost their opening qualifying game at home to France, with this window’s games against the group’s fourth and fifth seeds crucial in making up ground on France and the Netherlands.