Ward to play as emergency ‘Doc’?

IS Stephen Ward the new Gary Doherty — a defender-turn-striker?

Strange turn in events yes, but Wolves boss Mick McCarthy could put the Irish left-back up front alongside international colleague Kevin Doyle when his side takes on QPR.

With Steven Fletcher out injured and Wolves playing so well with their 4-4-2 formation McCarthy is tempted to play the Irish defender up front instead of reverting back to the 4-5-1 system used last season playing Kevin Doyle as a lone striker.

Earlier this week McCarthy admitted: I’ve always got ‘Superman’ — Stephen Ward, who can play up there.

“The team comes before anyone’s personal gain and what’s lovely about ‘Wardy’ is he takes that view. I’ve got another good left-back in George Elokobi and, if I can put another good left-back in and have the other playing up front, that’s got to be the way.

“Michael Kightly can also play up there or off someone and Sam Vokes is fine.”

But the cagey boss, who was linked with a pre-deadline loan move for Manchester United’s Federico Macheda, refused to elaborate on the subject.

“I’ve been asked about my contingency plan and you can go through them all,” he said.

“You can go through all the options and look at all of my players and see how I might do it, or change the shape or the system. That’s for me to ponder on, isn’t it?”

But Giovanni Trapattoni can sleep easily tonight as Portmarnock native Ward has no plans to change his position completely and just sees this as another opportunity to play up at the top level. “It might take a couple of minutes to get my bearings,” said the 26-year-old who joined Wolves from Bohs as a striker for €115,000 in January 2007.

“But I think with the quality of strikers we have here, it’s always going to be easy to play with them. They’ve all got such ability and knowledge of the role that wherever they tell me to go to, I’ll go.”