With the doom and gloom surrounding Ireland's failure to qualify for the World Cup in Russia this summer at the hands of Denmark, the nation's football fans have been on the hunt for a silver lining to the cloud that dwells over the senior squad, and they might finally have found it.
The Irish Independent's football correspondent Dan McDonnell joined Joe Molloy in the Off The Ball studio for the Sunday Paper Review, and talked about the expected inclusion of Declan Rice, and the likely possibility of the West Ham defender making his international debut against Turkey later this month.
The 19-year-old had been mooted to possibly switch allegiances to England as he's eligible to play for them through birth, but it appears Martin O'Neill is set to bring the centre-back into the squad, something McDonnell feels is badly needed to boost morale for both supporters and those around the camp.
"There's an element of paranoia that I think kicks into all these things now because of the Grealish thing. Anyone who is eligible that appears to be quite good, you're fearful they're going to go".
"In the Arsenal vs Man City game the other day there was only two English players on the pitch out of the 25 that were involved, and so when England are suffering from a scarcity of resources then the drip down effect was probably going to be problematic for Ireland, but Rice seems to be committed and I think it's always been expected that O'Neill is going to call him into the next squad".
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