Republic of Ireland national football team

But no, I think, look, when you're talking about kind of the way he's kind of done things, I think that's what, you know, he's kind of like, in my opinion, the championship sort of hersler at Brighton, you know what I mean? Where, you know, he's getting the best out of, I suppose, players that are largely unknown.

And, Even, like, he has players there at his disposal like Callum Robinson, who's been a big player for the Republic of Ireland over the, well, not in recent years, but definitely in the last 10 years, he's been one of our main players, probably our top scorer in that time.

He scored a lot of goals for us and important goals.

How is he getting on? Because it seems like it's a bit of a kind of a mixed bag.

Every manager has come in.

Mick McCarthy then comes in.

He phones up whoever the manager was of the Republic of Ireland of under 21s and said, we've got a lad here, Joel Bagan.

He qualifies for Ireland.

We might get into that a little bit later on.

but James Abankwa is someone we've been talking about a lot more recently over the last little while given his involvement with the Republic of Ireland starting XI as well as the fact that he's getting a lot of minutes through Denaise he was on the bench at the weekend in a 3-0 loss for them at home to Lecce so a disappointing result they've had a couple of disappointing results he is returning from a little bit of a knock though so I imagine that is why he didn't start considering he was awarded their Player of the Month award which is testament to how well he's been playing in maybe a squad that isn't performing to the way in which they would like to

Yeah, he's really developed his career in a nice sort of a way.

Like obviously he went there quite young from St. Pat's.

But one man that maybe has been forgotten as far as Brighton are concerned is Evan Ferguson.

We obviously haven't forgotten about him.

We spoke about him a little bit last week when obviously we mentioned the lads that had been injured for the Republic of Ireland and are still yet to come back in.

And Evan Ferguson wasn't really spoken about because he's just not on the radar at the minute.

And they thought that they should try and make it a bigger event and a college style event.

So they set up the Republic of Ireland Football Society on campus.

It was like a supporters group.

And they've been going away to away matches the past three or four years.

We've got, uh, Patrick Horgan on his new book.

He was in at Mick earlier this week as well, and also loads of reaction to other footballing stories as well, from the Sandra Martinez, the, the Republic of Ireland women's team hammering Kazakhstan.

Back after these.

[whooshing] You're welcome back to the week on Off the Ball.

[laughs] It's a really hard thing to get beyond.

No, it certainly is.

Um, let's move it on to a couple of other football stories here, because we brought you live coverage of the Republic of Ireland's clash with Kazakhstan on Tuesday night.

Of course, after the two games, they had won 12-nil on aggregate.

We were two weeks on the road.

We travel with the Boys in Green.

Um, yeah, living out of a suitcase, relying on washing machines in Serbia, in Hungary, and in my mam's house [laughs] back in Dublin, uh, trying to get through it all.

So it was absolutely mad, but it was brilliant.

Mm

... um, who are heading to an FAI, FAI Cup final.

Then we, we might see the level that we have seen in that competition-

Yeah

Right.

Um, but, uh, it, it was the ground.

Uh, and it was where the FAI Cup finals were played for, for years too.

But it came, uh, during the, uh, oh, uh, the '70s that they started going to Lansdowne Road instead.

This is obviously the green scene on Off the Ball with Cadbury.

He's a proud sponsor of the Republic of Ireland football teams.

It was a busy weekend, all things Ireland concerned, at the weekend, across the water, let's say.

And Dara O'Shea continued his excellent form and came up with the match winner for Ipswich in a...

in a late win against Fulham Fulham on obviously a relegation threatened team in the Premier League and he came up the late winner didn't perfect the knee slide or the slide as well as he could have but it just shows you the form that Daroche has been in this last few weeks and probably now one of the most important players Yeah, probably come to the fore now from an Irish perspective.

From an Irish perspective, 100%.

Even the fact that the window that we've had and we're so desperate to move on from as far as everything off the pitch goes, he was kind of thrown into the forefront of it with Seamus Coleman not being involved and Nathan Collins being injured and him then therefore becoming the spokesperson and the captain for the squad over what was a a tumultuous and difficult few weeks for the Republic of Ireland coming up with a winner as you say at the weekend he's filled in a little bit all over the place and that was the case even during the window for Ireland too he wasn't playing in the same position he was a little bit all across the back three and he's been playing right back a good bit for Ipswich this season was back in a centre half berth I believe at the weekend as far as I could tell anyway coming up with the winner against Fulham after only having a child a few days before obviously missed the last Israel game off the back of that so fairly successful all around for him he was speaking on Match of the Day actually after he got a bit of a feature he was talking to whoever was hosting that night actually I'm not entirely sure who it was was it Chappers? Gabby Logan was it Gabby Logan yeah so yeah good to see him doing well and I tell you what it's great to see from a Premier League perspective that the promoted teams look very well capable of going and being competitive this year and there are a couple of teams maybe that I mean me personally had a look at Fulham and thought they might struggle this year just with the nature of Arbeloa and the signings they'd made being very Arbeloa centric and if things didn't work out for them or didn't work out for him they would be left a little bit in limbo considering the stability they've been there with Marco Silva over the last little while so the fact that Ipswich look like they could very well put up a good fight at staying in the league and Dara O'Shea is of course there and Jack Taylor is of course there who's still injured at the moment and a few lads obviously that are out on loan same can be said for Hull another decent point for them the weekend exciting little second half against Everton obviously John Egan is there too and Hull look very well set to be capable at the back at the very least and Mohamed Beloumi is in great form and he's scoring a couple of goals so if those sort of teams can be playing well in the Premier League for a long period of time that can only be good from a Republic of Ireland perspective obviously not too much interest on the Coventry front if only Liam Kitching maybe had have hung around we might have had a little bit more appetite for watching them but back to the original point grey header from Dar O'Shea a very important one and a big win for Ipswich

yeah huge win and it seems like he's He's really established himself as Ipswich's most important defender.