TOTTENHAM manager Gerry Francis has admitted for the first time there is a clause in Chris Armstrong's club contract preventing the £4.5 million striker from playing for the Republic of Ireland.

Ireland's manager Mick McCarthy and his predecessor, Jack Charlton, both made strenuous efforts to prove Newcastle born Armstrong's Irish qualifications. Now Francis has revealed that it would have been impossible for Armstrong to play for Ireland.

"When Chris became our record signing a couple of years ago, we felt it was a very important clause to put in his contract that he could only play for England, not Ireland," said Francis.

"If we had qualified for European competition we would have been restricted at that time to tile number of non English players we could field - as Manchester United and other clubs have already found to their cost."

Even though those restrictions no longer apply, the clause has not been removed from Armstrong's contract. "Maybe it was a waste of effort in the first place. It turns out, apparently, that they could not find enough ancestry to qualify him for Ireland in the right way," added Francis.

The news that Tottenham no longer need the "England only" clause in Armstrong's contract, may rekindle McCarthy's hopes of discovering a distant Irish connection that would give him a new, young striker.

Armstrong is currently battling against an ankle injury but returned on Saturday after missing three games.