It would have been ‘crazy’ to cap Declan Rice against Moldova

Martin O’Neill has described the idea that he should have capped Declan Rice against Moldova last year – and thus secured the player’s future as an Ireland international - as “kind of crazy”.

It would have been ‘crazy’ to cap Declan Rice against Moldova

By Liam Makey

Martin O’Neill has described the idea that he should have capped Declan Rice against Moldova last year – and thus secured the player’s future as an Ireland international - as “kind of crazy”.

By the time that 2018 World Cup qualifier came around last October, Rice had already made a handful of appearances for West Ham and had also been called into a preliminary senior Irish squad, but he was on U21 duty when the Moldovans came to town - and O’Neill makes no apologies for that.

“You have to merit getting into the side for a start,” he said. “I have no qualms on that whatsoever. I might as well try and cap 16-year-olds then. Playing competitive football, you are trying to win football matches, or else I will end up capping 15-year-olds in competitive football just so they will play for Ireland for the next 15 years.”

Nailing down Rice’s international future at that point was simply not on the manager’s agenda – and nor should it have been, he insisted yesterday.

That had not entered my head at the time. And if those are my thoughts going into competitive international football - that I should be thinking of capping someone for something further down the line - you shouldn’t be doing the job in that case.

“Moldova, before we played Wales, where we were desperate to win the game? It is kind of crazy.”

O’Neill didn’t take issue with the suggestion that capping a young dual eligibility player in a competitive game for the main purpose of copper-fastening his international status might even be regarded as a form of entrapment.

“If you want to further the argument you could say that, absolutely,” he said.

However, he also suggested that Rice would have been fully conscious of the implications of featuring against Moldova.

“I think he would have been aware of it and he may well have said: ‘Well if I go on here I’m making a choice’. I wouldn’t have just sneaked him onto the pitch because he would have been aware of it. He might have thought, ‘By the way, I don’t want to be included here at all because it might affect me’. Who’s to say, in terms of the Moldova situation, that the player wouldn’t have had these thoughts anyway. He possibly would have done and then he might not have put himself into that position.

“I can only control the things that I can control. I’m not in control of other people’s feelings in terms of what they as a family, or as a single person, think.” While recent media reports have all tended to paint a picture of Rice responding positively to intensified courtship from England, O’Neill doesn’t believe Gareth Southgate has “promised him the earth at the end of the day” and said he still has grounds for hoping that the player might yet choose to stay with Ireland.

Whatever decision he comes to, of course, I will abide by it,” he said. “But if you are asking me in terms of us - we have capped him in the games and it’s effectively down to the player. The difference between himself and Jack Grealish - and it may be a strong difference- is that the family would like him to play for us. In Jack’s case, the family wanted him to play for England.

Asked if there is anything else he thinks he can do than he hasn’t already done to persuade Rice to choose the Republic, O’Neill replied: “I would like to go and see him again and I would intend to do so. His father seems a proper gentleman and I’ve been in contact with him.” O’Neill added that he expects a final decision from the player before the end of the year.

Caoimhin Kelleher (Liverpool), Jimmy Dunne (Hearts), Ryan Manning (Rotherham United) and Michael Obafemi (Southampton) are all new call-ups to the provisional squad for the friendly at home to Northern Ireland on November 15 and the Nations League game away to Denmark on November 19, while O’Neill confirmed that Glenn Whelan will lead out the team, on what will be his 85th and probably last appearance in the green shirt, for the meeting with the North at the Aviva Stadium.

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