Keogh ready to answer Ireland’s call in Bari

IT is a measure of the stop-start nature of Andy Keogh’s time in the Irish set-up that we have heard as much about him as we have seen him.

The Wolves player has the dubious distinction of being the first ‘second-choice’ player of an Irish manager who sees substitutes as a reservoir of last resort and not a rapid reaction force.

To be fair, he featured in four out of Giovanni Trapattoni’s nine games to date and ‘Key-O’, as the Italian refers to him, has been name-checked time and again by the gaffer since his arrival last May.