SOCCER WORLD CUP 2010 QUALIFYING GROUP EIGHT:SEÁN ST Ledger remains Ireland's most significant injury worry ahead of tomorrow's World Cup qualifier in Nicosia with the 24-year-old still feeling the effects of his collision with Preston goalkeeper Andy Lonergan while playing for his club last Saturday.

The defender trained with the Irish squad on Wednesday and seemed to be well on the road to recovery but then sat out the bulk of yesterday’s training session before the team’s flight to Cyprus.

It was a little more eventful than expected with a number of players making no effort to hide their annoyance upon discovering that their seats were economy class. There were echoes of the trip here back in 2001 when Roy Keane’s objections to FAI officials occupying the best seats on the plane to away trips led to a significant shift in policy.

This time the problem was that there were only 22 business class seats and some of them were allocated to members of the management team. Soon after take off, a brief game of high altitude musical chairs broke out with Liam Brady and Alan Kelly giving up their extra leg room so that Paul McShane, who recently had an operation on his knee, and Kevin Doyle could stretch out.

But Giovanni Trapattoni and Marco Tardelli stayed put while five Irish players, including Aiden McGeady and Stephen Hunt, were left in the more cramped seats.

The FAI insisted afterwards that they had been aware of the problem beforehand and had allocated the shorter players to the seats with less legroom.

Before take off, meanwhile, it had been clear that St Ledger had suffered a slight reaction to Wednesday’s run-out and, while insisting that he is still confident the player will be available to start, Brady says that a final decision will only be made after the final Irish training session at the GSP Stadium this evening.

“He actually trained very well and was feeling fine,” said Brady, “but this morning it was a little bit sore in his knee where he took the bit of a bang in the collision with his own goalkeeper. We just wanted to leave him out of it as we were doing a lot of shooting and 10 against 10 at the end where there is going to be a lot of tackling.

“But we’re confident he’ll be fit for the game on Saturday, fit enough to start although obviously we have a training session tomorrow (tonight) and that will be the deciding factor. If he comes through that, I think he will play”

With Paul McShane recovering from a serious knee problem himself and being viewed, as a result, as a possibility for the South Africa game rather than this one, Trapattoni’s options at the back are fairly slim and in the event that St Ledger were to fail a fitness test then Stephen Kelly looks almost certain to come in at right back with John O’Shea reverting to the centre of the team’s back four.

Elsewhere, there are more options with Caleb Folan set to be available up front although the real choices to be made relate to midfield where there are three players vying for two places.

Brady is happy that there are options and optimistic that a strong Irish team can get the sort of result that would take pressure off when Italy and Montenegro come calling next month.

“If we win out here, it looks like we could certainly grab a play-off position with the group still to play for so were going there to win,” he said. “It’s a very level group and there is very little between the teams as the results have shown; there have been lots of drawn games.

“But it’s great to be in this position. I’d hate to be going over there in their position, Bulgaria’s position. We’re in a great position and we want to capitalise on it.”

The timing of the game means that there would be a sense of the side blowing their chances if they were to lose to the Cypriots again but, said Brady: “We’re not thinking like that at all. It (the 5-2 defeat) is obviously a big talking point for the media and maybe for some of the fans who were there the last time around. But it demonstrated two things for me, one that the Cypriots are not to be underestimated. They’re a good side with a lot of good players.

“Even going back to the game before that in Cyprus, when we won 1-0, it was a test as well. They’re a good team and now we’re going there knowing that. But we’re also going there in good shape and rather than revenge, the motivation is going to be the World Cup and you can’t have any greater motivation than that.”