Given’s good to go...well, almost

Shay Given may have sat outIreland’s friendly againstBosnia-Herzegovina but he faced a barrage of questions afterwards that was just as incessant as any onslaught likely to come his way in Poznan or Gdansk next month.

Ireland’s No.1 was asked a dozen questions about his knee: how it was, when he will be back training, if he worried when the injury happened, how it was affecting his kicking. The grilling stopped just short of a request to lift up the leg of his tracksuit.

The problem seems to be no more complicated than a bit of wear and tear in an area of the knee where he underwent a cartilage operation more than a decade ago. Very good news considering the various injury worries attached to the squad right now.