Why Given will have felt very much at home

SHAY GIVEN must have felt very much at home last night.

Not just because he was making his 110th appearance for his country, but because another game passed him by without having to get his gloves all that dirty. At least in Manchester he gets to wear a tracksuit and stay warm.

For all Wales offered going forward, Given would have been better off back at City’s Carrington training ground where some of his injured colleagues, the development squad and, for some reason, the Dutch Olympic speed skating team were being put through their paces earlier in the day. Not convinced? Well, consider what the man himself said about his club situation earlier this week.

“I have trained more than I have ever trained,” he explained on Monday. “When you’re playing, the next day you have a warm-down so I’ve just stuck to training. I’m working harder than normal and hopefully that will stand me in good stead.”

Yep, its hard not to think that the Donegal man could have saved himself a lot of bother by staying in England’s north-east and roping the young Faroese goalkeeper Gunnar Neilsen into a few hours of drills.

Okay, so all this is ever-so-slightly tongue in cheek but only because Wales were that poor. By our count, Given touched the ball no more than 10 times throughout the course of the game and was called on to make two routine saves.

Not exactly the sort of performance that needs to be edited and sent to Roberto Mancini who has persisted with Joe Hart at Eastlands despite the England number one’s less than stellar efforts of late, the most recent coming against Birmingham City.

It’s a unique complaint to make walking away from Lansdowne Road but it really would have served Given and Ireland’s cause a hell of a lot more had the visitors delivered more punch up front and made the home rearguard earn their appearance fees.

Ireland’s next European Championship qualifier is against Macedonia in Dublin next month and if Mancini stays consistent in his selection policy Given may have played just two more games by then, against the Greeks of Aris FC home and away in the Europa League. Hmm, that’s not good.

Robbie Keane showed all too clearly how damaging a lack of match practice can be when he fluffed his lines against Slovakia in Zilina last September and Given himself looked rusty when conceding Morten Gamst Pedersen’s free against Norway two months later.

His first save last night was made on the stroke of half-time when Simon Church’s routine attempt from distance was spilled. At the risk of being incredibly picky, a top-of-his-game Shay Given would have gathered it at the first attempt.

The pity is that the January window has shut and hemmed him in at City for the rest of the season but here’s hoping the club makes it to the last 16 in Europe where they would play either Besiktas or Dynamo Kiev in the weeks leading up to the Macedonia tie. The Europa League may not be the tournament it once was during its UEFA Cup heyday, prior to the modern era when it was all but stripped of its sheen by the Champions League, but it could do far more for Given than this Carling Nations Cup.

The concept isn’t a bad one: add something tangible to the insipid rota of friendlies in the form of a tournament and trophy but the fact is that Wales lie 116th in the FIFA world rankings, Scotland are 53rd and Northern Ireland 38th.

Even the Republic have 34 nations looking down at them so the tribal nature of football on these islands was never going to attract large attendances — especially with England not involved — nor could it ever promise high-class games.

That may change. Maybe by the time Ireland and Scotland meet in the tournament’s last fixture next May both could well have a trophy to play for and the entertainment quota and attendance figures might even rise with the thermometer.

Right now, it already looks like a competition living on borrowed time and not just because England are talking about reviving something resembling the old Home Internationals in the next few years.

If it is to be remembered at all in the future it may for the fact that both Seamus Coleman and Ciaran Clark made their international debuts under its banner but very few supporters will be able to produce the ticket stub that says ‘I was there’.

Apparently, the crowd last night was 20,800, a figure that is the lowest yet by a considerable margin but it is isn’t a record that will stand beyond tonight when Scotland and Northern Ireland go about their business and the rest of Dublin go about theirs.