News

After the international retirements of Shay Given and Damien Duff the last thing we needed was a Richard Dunne farewell, but the Honey Monster is going to hang around for a while yet.

Damien Duff announced his decision to follow Given into retirement yesterday, despite the fact that most of the Friday morning papers had predicted that Duff would stay put for the road to Rio 2014.

Mixed messages like those have, unfortunately, been par for the course around Giovanni Trapattoni’s Irish squad of late and with precious little word about Dunne’s future intentions, there had been fears that he too would hang up his boots.

Dunne wasn’t named in the Irish squad to play Kazakhstan because of injury, but there was some welcome news from the Irish camp today when it was revealed that he will be making himself available again once he returns to first team action.

A statement released by the FAI read: “Giovanni Trapattoni and Marco Tardelli held a positive meeting with Richard Dunne today.

“Richard reconfirmed that he will be available again for international duty once he makes a full recovery.”

Like Duff and Given, Dunne has given incredible service to Ireland throughout his career, never more so than that memorable night in Moscow during the last qualifying campaign when a head wound and a makeshift jersey complete with a number 5 scrawled in permanent marker couldn’t stop him from repelling the Russians.

Unusually for the Irish team, we’re not exactly blessed with central defensive cover at the moment and from that perspective, the Honey Monster’s decision to hang around is a godsend.

Here’s to many more great nights in green with the big man bossing things at the back.