O’Hara decides he’s not Irish after all

Wolves winger Jamie O’Hara has announced that he wants to try and play for England, meaning he no longer feels like representing Ireland.

Back in February O’Hara said: "All my family are Republic of Ireland," he said. "In Wicklow, I've got a big Irish family and they're always phoning me up saying, 'come and play for Ireland', but through the young stages I've always played for England, so I wouldn't want to be disrespectful and say I'd play for Ireland when I'm not 100pc.

"But now, if the opportunity was to come, I'm 24, I'm playing Premier League football hopefully on a regular basis, so if I get the phone call, it's something I'd look at."

There was no great clamour from anybody other than his family over here to get O’Hara in and in fairness to him he was never banging on Giovanni Trapattoni’s door for a call-up anyway.

But now he has turned on his heel again and decided to try and make it into the England team after all.

"I want to play for England,” he said this weekend. “It's always been my aim to play for England since I was a kid. I've played for England at all levels. And it would be unfair to play for Ireland. I love all my Irish family. I speak to them all the time. They would love me to play for Ireland. But it would be unfair on the Irish players."

With a list as long as our arm of players who do want to play for us who can’t get into Trap’s squads – Ciaran Clark, Leon Best, Marc Wilson, Wes Hoolahan, Anthony Pilkington to name but a few – we won’t lose too much sleep over O’Hara’s decision.