SOCCER WORLD CUP QUALIFYING:IF ANDY Reid really had been, as Niall Quinn recently suggested, overdoing the propaganda side of his battle to get back into the Republic of Ireland side then he may well have decided to shut down the ministry for information side of the operation once and for all yesterday. Giovanni Trapattoni's decision to call up Martin Rowlands has provided the clearest signal yet he is immune to the now diminutive Dubliner's powers of persuasion.

Stephen Ireland may have called Trapattoni arrogant but the door back to international football remains firmly open for the Manchester City midfielder according to the veteran Italian.

All of which served to fuel renewed speculation in the wake of Rowlands’ return as to just what it was that Reid can have said to the Irish team manager in Wiesbaden last year.

Rowlands, who will now be among the Irish players to gather in Dublin today ahead of the games against Italy on Saturday and Montenegro four days later, is a decent midfielder who works hard, and can both tackle and pass.

He is, one could argue, a little unlucky not to have featured in more Ireland squads over the years but given that he is three years older than Reid, plays for a much lesser side (QPR) in a lower division and brings little to the current group that is not already there in some abundance, it is difficult to rationally explain his late inclusion at the expense of the Sunderland player.

In Dublin yesterday to promote a Carlsberg-sponsored poll of Irish fans (see www.facebook.com/carlsbergfootball), John O’Shea proved a little too wily to get dragged into the debate but his light-hearted account of Saturday’s encounter with Reid on its own would suggest that the 27-year-old merits a place in this squad.

“I had a good laugh with him,” said the Manchester United right back, who spent a good part of the afternoon at Old Trafford keeping his former international team-mate quiet in a match that ended in a 2-2 draw.

“I was trying to get him to stay out wide a bit more often and he kept disappearing on me . . . creating goals and stuff.

“Andy is a great lad, and is going to do his talking on the pitch. Hopefully that will be enough for him to get into the squad,” continued O’Shea who made clear his belief in the manager’s right to turn a deaf ear to the midfielder’s claims.

“He definitely could be in the squad with his ability, no doubt,” he said. “But that’s up to the manager, you know that. He’s going to pick the squad that he hopes is going to get us to South Africa. Andy is not in it at the minute and that is the manager’s choice.”

Still, the Waterford man’s assessment of the transformation in Reid’s club career fortunes suggests there just might be a better way. “Steve Bruce must have said something like: ‘You’re good enough, sort it out and you will be playing’. And you see the rewards Sunderland are getting,” he said.

Sure enough, it is increasingly difficult to see why Trapattoni, who looks likely to be without Damien Duff this weekend, cannot put a rolled up newspaper to better use when dealing with the apparently more dedicated Dubliner than employing it to beat him away.

O’Shea shrugs off the idea that Trapattoni has been a little lucky over the course of this campaign to date and that that is somehow to be frowned upon with the rather uncontroversial assertion that: “I’d rather have a lucky manager on my side than an unlucky one.”

But he does feel that the team needs to be a bit more assertive against the Italians if the visitors are to be beaten and Ireland’s rather slender hopes of topping Group Eight maintained.

“We probably need to be a little more brave attacking wise,” he said.

“Maybe committing more men forward at certain stages and being more clinical. I don’t think we’re going to win many games by a lot of goals. That’s sort of been proven in this group, when we’ve won games it’s been by the odd goal.

“But look, it’s one of them. You’re playing Italy and you’ll take any sort of win, if they batter us for 89 minutes and we get a corner and grab a goal . . . there’s lots of ways you can go about it.

“You keep a clean sheet for as long as you can and hope that one of the lads who can produce a bit of magic, does it and we get the win we need.”

In the continued absence of Reid, one of the few players who answers O’Shea’s description, Duff remains a major doubt for Saturday’s game as do Reading’s Shane Long, Scunthorpe’s Joe Murphy and, most critically, Steven Reid of Blackburn Rovers, who it is increasingly hard to see at this stage playing any part against the Italians.

The FAI, meanwhile, have said that they are already in talks with a number of travel companies about requirements in the event of the team qualifying for the play-offs.

The issue has arisen after Ray Treacy announced yesterday that he is to retire and that his company, which has looked after the Republic of Ireland’s travel arrangements in recent years, is to cease trading.