Harry Kane able but not willing for Ireland, says Martin O’Neill

At this late stage in the saga, it hardly required official confirmation that the trail had gone cold but, yes, just for the record, Martin O’Neill did concede yesterday that Irish interest in Harry Kane is definitively over.

“Yeah it is,” said the Derry man, speaking at his latest squad announcement in Dublin. “I was talking to somebody about this and we were saying that Harry himself always wanted to play for England. It was as simple as that.”

Eligible for Ireland through his Galway-born father, the striker — who is in red-hot form for Spurs — seems assured of a first senior England call-up for the upcoming games against Lithuania and Italy but, yesterday, O’Neill revealed how, for the briefest of times, he had hopes that the London boy might go green.