Jon Walters out to make up for Euros frustration

Martin O’Neill might feel sad about saying goodbye to Robbie Keane — and sadder still that, as he’s often pointed out, he didn’t have the services of the record goalscorer in his prime — but the Ireland manager finds consolation in the fact that, even at 32, another of his strikers, Jon Walters, is good to go again.

The national team’s player of the year in 2015, the Stoke man’s contribution to helping Ireland qualify for Euro 2016 was summed up by O’Neill yesterday as “pivotal”.

So it was nothing less than an “awful shame”, he added, that injury restricted Walters to little more than a walk-on part in France.