Hallgrimsson's shock message to James McClean ahead of World Cup qualifiers

Heimir Hallgrímsson has opened the door to a sensational James McClean return to the green jersey.
The Ireland manager explained that he hadn't considered the Wrexham captain because he was under the impression that McClean had quit international football.
However, the Derry native stated last year that he would find a call-up 'a hard one to turn down' - while he added: 'Never say never.'
Hallgrímsson is short on left-back options, with Robbie Brady currently the number one pick for that role.
Shamrock Rovers defender Josh Honohan has been drafted in for the upcoming friendlies at home to Senegal and away to Luxembourg.
McClean will be back in the Championship next season after winning back-to-back promotions with Wrexham - and Hallgrímsson said: 'That was my understanding when I came - he was out.
'Obviously, we've spoken about him a little bit, especially when I went to Derry.
'He is a player of interest, really. Again, a character that could help us at some point.
'I think this camp, we were more looking at younger players, but obviously we look at him like everyone else.
'If he is better than the ones we have already, I would have no problem with selecting him. And I've said before, age is not an issue for me if a player is 16 and better than the ones before or 35. It really doesn't matter if they are better than the ones we have.'
Hallgrímsson hasn't watched the Welcome to Wrexham documentary, but he has an idea of what 103-time capped McClean can bring to a dressing room.
'I don't know the story behind his decision (to drop down to League Two) and what happened and all of that. I read up on his history and all the things around him,' said the Ireland manager.
'Interesting, it shows his strength in character as well, reading up on him.
'Yeah, probably the change (of club) was to help this team to develop and progress. And here you have it. So maybe that's a good decision for the club to take him and for him to go there.
'And he is probably now a legend at that club as well. Correct?
'In regards to us, I don't know him personally. I haven't spoken to him, but just caught up on him, seen him play.
'Like I said, what is he, 36? So he's not getting any younger. But if he's better than the ones we have, I would have no problems with selecting him.
'Again, it would have been good to have camps to call him in and work with him for a week.'
Another potential left-sided option is PEC Zwolle's Anselmo Garcia MacNulty.
The former Ireland Under-21 defender played every single minute in the Eredivisie with his side last season and was watched by Hallgrímsson, but he only made the stand-by list for the June friendlies.
'I've seen a few games. He's a promising player. Now, the good thing for him is he's playing in a team that believes in him,' said the Icelander.
'He's playing every minute in a proper league. A different style than he's used to, so he's adapting to the style they are playing.
'A left-footed centre-back, we don't have many of those. But (he has) probably more chance of playing as a left-back, but he's not doing that at this stage.
'He can play both, so if you look to the future, definitely a guy that we will have our eye on.'

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Irish Daily Mirror

44 minutes ago

• Irish Daily Mirror

'We let ourselves down a little' Cavan hero on opportunities missed with Kerry

With the week that's in it, it was apt that the RTE series, Hell For Leather - The Story of Gaelic Football, landed on the 1947 All-Ireland final last Monday night. It recalled how the novel idea of staging the GAA's showpiece event in New York, to mark the centenary of the worst year of the great famine, came from the Clare county convention. The motion was resisted by the GAA's top brass before it came to Congress but Clare delegate Canon Michael Hamilton spoke passionately. 'They'll never see their homeland again,' he said of the Irish that had been scattered to America, 'and are you going to deny them this bit of Ireland?' The motion passed. Kerry and Cavan qualified for the final at the Polo Grounds some months later, with Cavan scoring their greatest victory in the most unique All-Ireland final of all. 'Cavan glorious and happy in victory,' surmised Micheál O'Hehir on the highlights reel as the players celebrated. 'The greatest chapter in Irish sporting history came to an end.' The links to 1947 have invariably endured in Cavan teams since. Current full-back Killian Brady is the grand-nephew of Phil 'The Gunner' Brady, who played at midfield in 1947, for example. Cormac O'Reilly's grand-uncle was John Wilson, wing-back 78 years ago and a long-time Fianna Fáil TD who would serve as Tánaiste. O'Reilly's father, Damien, has no direct familial links, but was a key player for Cavan when they played Kerry in two landmark fixtures in 1997, 50 years on from their last Championship victory over them. The first was an All-Ireland semi-final, Cavan's first in 28 years having ended their famine in Ulster, and a game that still rankles all these years on. Cavan competed well for the most part and Fintan Cahill's first half goal gave them impetus. However, Maurice Fitzgerald's brilliance proved too much as Kerry finished strongly to win by seven points. But O'Reilly views it as an opportunity missed. Ulster teams had done well in Croke Park since 1991. Kerry hadn't won an All-Ireland in 11 years and had been well beaten by Mayo the year before. 'I just feel that we let ourselves down a little,' says O'Reilly. 'It was much different in Ulster because in '95 we had been in the Ulster final and in '96 we'd been in the Ulster semi-final and all the lads would say, because I retired shortly after that and Stephen King did as well, but we nearly knew we'd win Ulster in '97. 'We were that confident of winning it that we all stayed on and I don't think we just had that same belief when we got to Croke Park and as well as that, to be fair, when you're not there year in, year out it's different. It's difficult. We probably should have won the All-Ireland that year because I believed we were as good as the other teams. We were as good as Mayo as well that got to the final and I believe we were as good as Kerry.' Long before that All-Ireland semi-final, the counties had been slated to play their opening round League game against each other, in October 1997, in New York to mark the 50th anniversary of the Polo Grounds final. Martin McHugh had already stepped down as Cavan manager and selectors Michael Reilly and Donal Donoghue took charge of the side for a game attended by some 10,000 at Denning Stadium on Randall's Island. Fitzgerald had been imperious once again in Kerry's All-Ireland final win over Mayo three weeks earlier, and his levels hadn't dropped as he spearheaded another victory. O'Reilly has fond memories of 'an amazing trip', with several of the 1947 team on board, including Wilson, his wife's uncle, but he wished they could have given the sizeable Cavan diaspora in New York something more. 'Like, we got two chances at Kerry within a few months of each other and both times we weren't successful so that's what I look back on - the disappointment, and I think that's where sometimes teams let themselves down. There's that extra bit of belief because I know you hear all the quotes of 15 versus 15 and so on and so forth, but I think if you have a little bit more belief… 'I'd love if we had to win in New York just for the Cavan people out there. I wish we had but we didn't.' The links with those games 28 years ago to 1947 were obvious. And as much as we might like to romanticise, it would be stretching it to draw parallels with this afternoon's preliminary quarter-final in Killarney between two sides who come into the fixture on the back of heavy defeats, despite the lineage that is there. 'I don't think it'll come into conversation at all now, no,' says O'Reilly. He is frustrated by the current team's inconsistency throughout the League and Championship, but their performance in beating Mayo recently offers hope. 'Cavan were very, very good and then you come out again and then you put in a good 20 minutes against Donegal at Breffni Park. We were against a strong breeze and we're within two points of Donegal coming up to half-time and then we conceded a goal and then the second half was a disaster and then very poor again last week so it's very difficult to know what to expect.' And Cormac, who's having his best year yet with the county, wouldn't be giving him the inside track either. 'He tells you absolutely zero about Cavan or what's going on or who would be playing. You'd read more in the paper than he'd actually tell you about what's happening in camp but after a match I would have a chat with him. 'We're up against it obviously but I suppose there's absolutely no pressure on Cavan. There is a bit of pressure on Kerry now after being beaten by Meath. 'They're in Killarney, they should beat us - but you never know.'

Irish Times

an hour ago

• Irish Times

Dara Ó Cinnéide: ‘I'm getting sick of this #WeAreKerry stuff. What does it actually mean anymore?'

Dara Ó Cinnéide was in Tullamore last weekend, watching the Kerry game alongside an old college friend from Meath . On the way up the road, there was campfire gossip going around that 'a significant Kerry player' wouldn't be togging out. When he saw Seán O'Shea walking around in his tracksuit during the warm-up, the low sludge of unease he'd been feeling for much of the week started to properly crystallise. 'We're in a bit of bother here,' he told his friend, who did what all right-thinking friends would have done and dismissed him immediately. Life is far too short to be listening to Kerrymen poor-mouthing in the 15 minutes before a championship match, especially if you're from a county that has beaten them just once in the past 70 years. 'After about 10 minutes,' Ó Cinnéide says, 'my mate from Simonstown turned to me and said, 'F**k it, I should have listened to you and put a few bob on this, we'd have paid for the weekend'. 'You could see from the start that Kerry weren't working hard enough. They weren't earning the right to play the ball around. They were trying to flick the ball up to themselves on a wet day and all this carry-on. If I'm a Meath player on the pitch at that moment, I'm going, 'These lads aren't great, are they?'' READ MORE They certainly weren't last Saturday . The one upside for the Kerry players who got rinsed by Meath in Tullamore is that the game wasn't televised in full anywhere. However bad Kerry people imagine it might have been, it was worse when you watched it back. The ease with which Meath stretched away in the 15 minutes before half-time was pretty astonishing to watch. It would be one thing if Meath had come up with a flurry of intricate set plays to bamboozle them but the reality was far more prosaic. They routed Shane Ryan's kick-outs, annihilated Kerry on breaking ball. Rudimentary stuff. With 20 minutes gone, Kerry led 0-7 to 0-5. Between there and half-time, Ryan had 10 kick-outs. He went long seven times and Kerry lost every one of them. On two of the three occasions he went short, Kerry turned the ball over almost immediately. Nine of those 10 Kerry kick-outs ended in a Meath player taking a shot at the posts, leading to eight points. Meath's dominance of the Kerry kick-out was so total that when the 10th one finally bought Kerry some breathing space – Joe O'Connor won a brave free that Mike Breen immediately moved on to Dylan Geaney – it led to their first possession in the Meath half of the pitch in 13 minutes of football. Even if there's an element of potluck at the kick-out under the new rules, a team that allows itself to get penned in for 13 minutes is miles off being a contender. 'There were probably a few doubts about where we were at anyway,' says Darran O'Sullivan. 'I've been in games like that where you really don't perform. You don't turn up and you find out the hard way that if you're not committed, which is the only word I can say really, you're going to get found out. 'They were missing a lot of big players, which isn't an excuse. But if you look at who they are – Paudie [Clifford] and Seánie for example – footballers though they are, they love the rough stuff as well. They're not going to back down from any fella. They're not going to shy away from any physicality. Paudie Clifford of Kerry against Cork. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho 'We all know we have great footballers. But you've to be more than that. You have to have the bit of nastiness to you. You have to have the willingness to get hit and give a few hits and get dirty.' And so, in a week like this, the walls come tumbling down all around the county. The sun is out, the schools are finishing up, the tourists are landing daily. A summer heatwave in Kerry is one of the great Irish birthrights and if you get to combine it with the county team hitting a rocky patch, you get the full Kingdom experience. Nobody expects Kerry to lose to Cavan this Saturday but if they have to play Armagh in a quarter-final next weekend, it's perfectly feasible that could be that. All of which means that in every corner of the county, it's the first topic of conversation this week. 'Players are pretty much insulated from it,' says Ó Cinnéide. 'But I nearly think they should be exposed to it a bit. We had no social media in our time so we were able to get into and do our stuff and not worry about the noise. Even though players now take steps to do the same, it has to be almost impossible for some of it not to seep through. And maybe that's no bad thing. 'We can't have it both ways in Kerry. We can't have documentaries on the TV at the moment and fellas going on about the history of Kerry football being such-and-such and what it all means. Well, if it does mean so much more down here, let's see it. Let's see it in Killarney on Saturday. 'I'm getting sick of this #WeAreKerry stuff. What does it actually mean any more? There's a reason we won all the All-Irelands we won – it's because there's an anger there. It's because there's hurt there when you lose. It's because the prestige of the tribe is damaged by a defeat and because it pisses you off on a Monday morning if you've lost on the weekend. 'And that's just me, an ex-player and supporter. I stayed above in Tullamore on Saturday night and drank porter and was just fed up and in bad form after it. I'm just wondering does it hurt any more? I'm sure the players are hurting. I'm sure they are.' Amid all the noise, it should be pointed out that Kerry are still bookies' favourites for the All-Ireland , alongside Armagh. One defeat won't define their summer and if all it takes is an attitude adjustment, that's an achievable target in a short space of time. Particularly if they can get some of their more high-profile injured players back on the pitch by next weekend. But even if they can, Armagh loom on the horizon with the memory of last year's All-Ireland semi-final fresh in the minds of everyone . Kerry were outstayed as much as they were outplayed in that game – O'Shea, David Clifford and Jason Foley all limped away from shots in extra-time before having to stretch out their calf muscles to get rid of cramp. Down in the tunnel under the Hogan Stand that Saturday night, Stefan Campbell was entirely up front about how certain Armagh were of their advantage. 'The big thing we took away with us at full-time of normal time was the amount of Kerry players that were obviously hurting and cramping,' he said. 'I think we won that psychological battle coming out for extra-time. We made the point inside – we've been there before and Kerry haven't. They probably weren't as battle-hardened as we were.' Dara Ó Cinnéide playing for Kerry in 2000. Photograph: Tom Honan/Inpho Kerry have had to dig deeper this year than was the case in 2024 – their average margin of victory for the five games before they met Armagh last summer was over 10 points. This time around, Cork have run them to extra-time and they've lost to Meath. Cavan are being dismissed by everybody but they finished level on points with both those teams in Division Two this year. They will at least believe they can give Kerry a rattle. But there's a sweet spot between being battle-hardened and battle-weary. If Kerry get past Cavan and find themselves landing into Croke Park next weekend having had to rush the likes of Clifford, O'Shea, Paul Geaney and Diarmuid O'Connor back from injury, what kind of shape can they expect to be in? They couldn't last the pace against Armagh with everyone fully-fit and available. What chance would they have as a weakened version of that side in 2025? 'I do think Kerry will be a different proposition against Cavan,' says O'Sullivan. 'I think Paudie will be back, Seánie will be back, I think Paul will be back. I think they'll be more than strong enough for Cavan. But it's a case then of how strong will lads be for Armagh. Because that's what the real test will be.' Can they turn it around? Yes, obviously. This is Kerry, when all comes to all. They've won All-Irelands from stickier spots than this. In 2009, Sligo missed a penalty three minutes from time that would have put them out of the championship. A week later, they were level with Antrim with 10 minutes to go and just about got out the gap. On the bus home that day, the blood got up as soon as word came through that they had drawn the Dubs in the quarter-final and it turned their whole season around. 'Anger can be a very powerful force,' says Ó Cinnéide. 'And you can't manufacture it. It's either there or it's not. A lot depends now on who's back and how they come back. 'The attitude needs to be so much better. Just get nasty, like. I was always criticised for being a nice footballer but there were times when you had to get nasty and you wouldn't be found wanting. That's what people need to see. 'Go back to Tullamore in '09 against Antrim. There was a genuine rallying that day from the Kerry supporters. I was in the stands that day and you could feel it, as if people were saying, 'Jesus, this team might be dying but we're going to support them'. And they did. 'Kerry supporters can be very good like that but the players need to feel that this weekend. They need to feel the anger but also feel the support. Last Saturday, all they heard when they came out on to the pitch was polite support. It wasn't good enough.' Things need to change, quickly, on and off the pitch. Otherwise, they could be knocked out of the championship in June for the first time since 1994. What will they talk about then? Nobody in Kerry wants to spend the rest of the summer finding out.

Irish Examiner

9 hours ago

• Irish Examiner

Runaway leaders Shamrock Rovers inflict more damage on Cork City

SHAMROCK ROVERS 4 (Michael Noonan 6, 29, Pico Lopes 26, Rory Gaffney 49) CORK CITY 1 (Alex Nolan 69) Orange was the appropriate colour donned by Cork City as despite the sunniest day of the year they felt a relegation gale warning. Their survival prospects won't be defined by another humbling from runaway leaders but the manner of this meek surrender, a week after Bohemians schooled them at home, will cause alarm. A bright start for the visitors was soon punctuated by 16-year-old Michael Noonan being allowed to slalom into the box and fire the opener for Shamrock Rovers beneath Tein Troost. Another pair of goals were conceded to Pico Lopes and Noonan merely over two minutes apart, leaving the game effectively over as a contest by the half hour mark. Rory Gaffney completed the rout four minutes after the restart before City substitute Alex Nolan bundled home a consolation. If that coming with 21 minutes remaining might have signalled a comeback, then the respective positions at the summit and foot of the table injected reality into the assumption. Rovers, resting several mainstays including Jack Byrne, Graham Burke and Matt Healy for Monday's derby against Bohemians, were always in cruise control. There was never any inkling of the 4-4 draw at Tallaght from City's last Premier Division campaign. City sit where they never were during that relegation season of two years ago, rock bottom, and the new management of Ger Nash and David Meyler will circle back-to-back home games against Drogheda United on Monday and St Patrick's Athletic four days later as pivotal. Eight-placed Waterford extending their buffer to 13 points reduces further the hopes of avoiding the relegation playoff but the pressing challenge as the games remaining dissolve is avoiding the automatic drop. City have lost over half their 20 matches with all Nash having to show from his four games to date a draw at home to Shelbourne. Holding the champions raised talk of a revival yet it can be perceived as a false dawn, for the traditional managerial bounce hasn't materialised. His decision to cull captain Charlie Lyons from the starting line-up spoke of decisiveness from his early takeaways but the central defensive duo in his place were given the runaround by rampant Rovers. Lyons was introduced at the break, along with another experienced campaigner, Seán Murray, in a bid to stem the bleeding. Those calls followed an impromptu discussion between Nash and his recently appointed assistant after being subjected to another sobering 45 minutes. Djanairo Daniels looked to have set the tone with a shove on Danny Mandroiu within moments of kick-off followed by a shot wide but the rest of the half would be spent predominantly inside City's half. Their livewire Cathal O'Sullivan was impeded from playing out of it in the passage of play leading up the opener. Once his pass inside was nicked off the toe of Kitt Nelson, two passes later and O'Sullivan was raiding into the box. He chopped beyond both City's centre-backs, Darragh Crowley and Freddie Anderson, before tucking a soft shot beneath an unusually poor Troost. Malik Dijksteel did test Ed McGinty and Evan McLaughlin fired over but two quickfire goals made it 3-0. O'Sullivan's clumsy 26th minute tackle on Trevor Clarke incurred a booking and free-kick, which Dylan Watts curled in for Lopes to elude Crowley and power home with a thumping header. City were dissected again from the next attack, Noonan slipping in between the two defenders to stroke home his second. Further slack defending on the turnover cost the Rebels when Mandroiu sent Gaffney clear past the lost Josh Fitzpatrick. All the veteran striker had to do was roll the ball into the net. It was keep-ball for Rovers thereafter with a spate of subs from both sides. Whereas Milan Mbeng hooked a clear sight on goal wide, Nolan didn't miss with his, despite defender John O'Sullivan attempting to prevent it crossing the line. SHAMROCK ROVERS: E McGinty; D Cleary, R Lopes, C O'Sullivan; D Grant (A McEneff 73), D Watts (C Barrett 52), J O'Sullivan, T Clarke (M Kovalevskis 46); R Gaffney, D Mandroiu (G O'Neill 52); M Noonan. CORK CITY: T Tein; M Mbeng (H Nevin 61), F Anderson, D Crowley, J Fitzpatrick; E McLaughlin, G Bolger; C O'Sullivan (A Nolan 66), K Nelson (S Murray 46), M Dijksteel (C Lyons 46); D Daniels (S Maguire 61). Referee: A O'Dowd (Dublin). Attendance: 4,355.