Delaney relishing his days in green

GIVEN the week that’s been it for the Irish squad, there’s a lot of talk about players wanting to be here. It all means a little more for Ipswich’s Damien Delaney though.

At one stage during the players’ mixed zone in Malahide yesterday, he rolled up his shorts to reveal the long-term results of what seemed an innocuous dead leg in training last summer. Running all the way down his left hip to his knee, Delaney has a scar 15 inches long and two inches wide. But then he’s also lucky to have a limb at all.

The dead leg turned out to be compartment syndrome, a compression of tissue which can require amputation.