Joey out to prove point to himself

Joey O’Brien turned up in Dublin this week eager to put the past behind him and forge a fresh start with Ireland but yesterday found himself prodded and probed about an international career that has been more stop than start.

He was barely 20 when he made his senior debut against Sweden in 2006, in what was Steve Staunton’s first fixture in charge, but only four more caps have followed and five years separated an appearance against Cyprus in ‘07 and a belated call-up for a friendly against Serbia last year.

Injuries were the mainstay of that exile, painfully damaging and damn near incurable injuries that almost left him on the game’s scrapheap, but an earlier source of frustration, of which he spoke in 2008, didn’t help his cause with Giovanni Trapattoni just six months into his reign.