Judge will stay patient after return from hell

On the eve of Ireland’s friendly defeat in Turkey last Friday, Seamus Coleman conceded that, as the team captain — and a Premier League player to boot — the focus of attention would inevitably be on his welcome in a green shirt after a year out through injury.

But, typically, the Donegal man made a point of drawing attention to Alan Judge, another player who was back in the Irish set-up after an even longer period sidelined through a double-leg fracture which, following complications, required further surgery and ultimately kept him off a football pitch for some 20 months.

That the Brentford schemer also made an appearance, off the bench, in the Antalya Stadium, was another significant consolation to be drawn from a game which — Declan Rice’s assured first cap aside — provided little enough to write home about from an Irish perspective.