Seamus Coleman’s horror injury continues to cast long shadow
On foot of securing another useful point to maintain Ireland’s unbeaten record in World Cup qualifying and keep them joint top of Group D on points at the halfway stage, and with the prospect of a friendly tonight against Iceland — everyone’s second-favourite Euro 2016 side — to relish, there would, in other circumstances, have been a generally upbeat mood to match the gloriously sunny weather out at Abbotstown yesterday.
Ireland v Iceland
Aviva Stadium, 7.45pm
Jakob Kehlet (Denmark)
Live on eir Sport 2
Ireland 11/10, Iceland 5/2, Draw 21/10
Instead, the shock of the dreadful injury suffered by Seamus Coleman against Wales at the Aviva on Friday night still reverberated around Ireland’s training base.
A sombre Martin O’Neill said: “Seamus’s injury has cast a shadow over everything, including Friday night’s match — and that was a very important competitive game — so you can imagine the shadow it casts over a friendly game.”
The captain, who remains in a Dublin hospital after undergoing surgery on a double-break of his right leg, was “still pretty down” when the manager visited him again on Sunday.
“But he’s not in as much pain, the operation went very well and it’s just a matter of coming to terms with it,” O’Neill added.
While estimates for recovery from such an injury generally range, optimistically, from six to nine months, the Derryman reiterated that it’s too early to put any kind of time-frame on when Coleman might return.
“There’s no point in me trying to define some time or other for him, I just don’t know,” he said. “We’ve got games coming up in September and October and my own view is that it would be a long shot if he was making those games.”
If, as is now widely feared, Coleman will not play again this year, then in due course O’Neill will have a decision to make about who will become his first-choice right full-back for the remainder of the World Cup qualifying campaign, with Derby County’s Cyrus Christie — who came on for the stricken captain against Wales — the leading candidate.
“I haven’t really given it a great deal of thought yet,” said the manager. “Seamus is very hard to replace, he’s one of the best full-backs in Europe and he’s been inspirational really, especially since he’s taken over as captain. So he will be very hard to replace.
“Cyrus Christie is a very talented player, very strong going forward and it’s really up to him. I think he’s capable of taking that step. The times that he has played for us before, he’s done very well — he scored a very important goal against Gibraltar in the away game and a couple of minutes later he headed one off the line. So he’s made a contribution and it’s up to him now.”
O’Neill’s dismay at the nature of the challenges on Friday night by Neil Taylor and Gareth Bale which, respectively, left Coleman requiring major surgery and John O’Shea in need of stitches, had not abated after 72 hours, the Ireland manager astonished at talk of Wales appealing the yellow card sanction which leaves them without Bale for June’s game in Serbia.
“I can’t see how they can possibly think about appealing a card when it was very, very close to being red,” he said, having first pointed out that, in any event, bookings can only be appealed on the grounds of mistaken identity.
“On another day the referee could very easily have given a red card. I’ll reiterate — I don’t think anybody can disagree — both challenges were very, very poor.”
And asked if he thought there was a possibility that Coleman might not even have suffered his injury had referee Nicola Rizzoli taken stronger action moments earlier against Bale, O’Neill said: “He may not have done, that is true. The referee is in charge of the game, that’s the point. As I mentioned there, I thought both challenges, when I have seen them back, have been very, very poor indeed.”
O’Neill also confirmed yesterday that he plans to personally contact Everton to discuss the loss to them, as well as Ireland, of Coleman, the seriousness of whose injury has, at least for the last couple of days, overshadowed recurring tensions between the international and club camps about the fitness of James McCarthy who, having apparently recovered sufficiently from a hamstring problem to be named in the team for Friday, then had to pull out after suffering a setback during the warm-up at the Aviva.
Looking back over his own career as player and manager to find reasons why Coleman should remain optimistic about making a full recovery, O’Neill highlighted the example of Sweden international Henrik Larsson who broke his leg in two places during Celtic’s 1–0 defeat in a Uefa Cup tie against Lyon in late October 1999 and was back in action for the final game of that season.
“Before I went to Celtic, about five or six months before that, Henrik Larsson had a very serious injury and he recovered magnificently and the injury didn’t bother him again from then until the end of his career,” said the former Parkhead boss.
“So players have recovered. Great players have broken their legs and come back, and Seamus — obviously it’s very early for him to start considering all those things — but he is positive.
“Naturally, as I mentioned at the start, he’s down, as he would be as the realisation that he is going to be out of action for quite some considerable time has dawned on him. Those type of things don’t just take five minutes to get over.
“But he’s very strong, he’s got a lot of good people around him, his family is very, very strong as well and he is positive that he will be back and as good as ever.”
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