When not being selected to start can be a good thing

Famine at one end of the pitch, feast at the other.

“If you think about it, we have six centre-backs with us at this moment,” remarked Martin O’Neill yesterday, a figure which amounts almost to an embarrassment of riches compared to the threadbare look in the forward department where Shane Long is the manager’s only orthodox striker for tonight’s game against Slovakia — though Anthony Pilkington could beg to differ if he gets a rare opportunity to transfer his goal prowess from Cardiff to Dublin.

But, at the back, there is, as O’Neill put it, “healthy competition” for some game time against Slovakia.