Puskas he ain’t, but Reid on right wavelength

For Andy Reid, it must have been just like old times. Five years ago he earned his 25th international cap in an end-of-campaign knockabout against Wales under interim gaffer Don Givens.

Last night was his 26th and with interim boss Noel king manning the dugout. Sixty-six Ireland games came and went in between.

The joke this past while, one even Giovanni Trapattoni would have understood, was that the Dubliner got better with every game he didn’t play such was the furore that followed his dispatch in the wake of ‘Guitargate’.