Underdog O’Dea stays positive

There was a sheepish air about 25-year-old Darren O’Dea as he emerged from the RTÉ studios on Sunday night as the FAI’s freshly-minted Young International Player of the Year.

In a way, the award was symbolic of the defender’s career: one which has yet to fully discard talk of promise and potential five years after Paolo Maldini gave his famous nod of approval in the wake of a Champions League tie at Parkhead.

Stints at Reading and Ipswich Town have come and gone, both of them calls of mutual convenience that failed to end with a full-time contract, and so it is that he finds himself in a similar holding pattern at Leeds United.