Football Gallery

Playing for your country. Pulling on the green jersey at Lansdowne Road – or, should we say, the Aviva – has long been the dream of many a young Irish kid.

It seems, though, that not all of our international footballers share that dream.

Okay, it was a nondescript end-of-season tournament match against a bunch of no-hopers from north of the border, but still. There’s a big qualifier a week or so away, so you’d think there would have been a bit of interest from some of Irish soccer’s brightest young talents (and Caleb Folan).

Anyway, five of them cried off this week, some of them without even sending a note from their mammy.

We set about trying to find out where they’d gone by putting our best investigative journalist on the case.

And, as our photographic evidence shows, we’ve discovered their whereabouts while they should have been on duty for Trapattoni’s boys on Tuesday night.

First up, Anthony Stokes.