Fringe players poised to steal the limelight

SOCCER: With the more dramatic events of yesterday evening's armed robbery of their hotel's reception still to come, the Irish squad made what seemed a rather uneventful start to their preparations for tomorrow evening's friendly international against Canada over the weekend.

Nottingham Forest's Andy Reid and John Thompson both trained with their new senior international colleagues for the first time yesterday and by last night all but Richard Dunne, who is expected this morning, had gathered at the squad's north Dublin base.

On his way out at some stage today, however, will be Colin Healy, who has been ruled out of the game by a foot injury, while Liam Miller's senior debut will have to wait until the new year after the Celtic midfielder failed to recover sufficiently from a hamstring problem to have any chance of featuring against the Canadians tomorrow night.

"I don't know how long Liam will stay on with us," said Brian Kerr yesterday, "but it's been good to have him here because he hasn't been in the squad before and even the couple of days will have helped him to settle in for the future."

Kerr's only other concerns are about Steven Reid (ankle) and John O'Shea (shin) and although neither player's injury should affect his ability to play there may be some reluctance on Kerr's part to risk antagonising club managers by aggravating even minor niggles head of such a low key game.

The Ireland manager has, however, already said that both Reids as well as Stephen McPhail will play some part in the game while Graham Kavanagh, making his fourth appearance for Ireland and his first in four and a half years, will start. "We have a lot of players here who didn't play much of a part in the last qualifying campaign and it's a chance for us to give them a chance," said Kerr. "I'm anxious to give them games but I can't do it all at once. This will be the first of a few friendly games, though, and we'll be looking to give them all a chance over the next few games.

"What we're looking to do here is develop a bigger squad, one in which more players will be available and flexible enough to come in and do a particular job because we're looking at being part of either a six or a seven-team qualifying group for the World Cup, so there's going to be more competitive games and that is going to place additional demands on us."

Sitting alongside Kerr at yesterday's press conference for the first time since his own elevation to the senior ranks was Andy Reid, whose form at Forest during the past few months has generated a good deal of expectation ahead of this, his first senior call up. "I had a good second half of last season and it's started well for me against since the summer," said the 21-year-old, "but to get into the squad was great news and it would mean the world to me to play at Lansdowne Road where I used to go to watch the games. If I get my chance, though, I don't think I'll let anyone down."

The Canadians arrived into Dublin yesterday having flown directly from the Czech Republic where they were beaten 5-1 on Saturday.