Friendlies take on own meaning

This weekend we meet up for the game against Greece on Wednesday night at the Aviva Stadium.

You will often here people casually dismiss games like this as “meaningless friendlies” but I would argue that friendlies are very much what you make of them and how seriously — individually as a player and collectively as a team — you take them.

And, of course, if such a game represents your first appearance for your country or even a chance for an emerging player to really stake a claim to a place in the first 11, then they could hardly be more meaningful. I know this well from personal experience because four years ago this month I made my Irish debut on a rainy night at Croke Park in a friendly against Poland.