Stop Press - Team Ireland Update

Team Ireland is looking bigger by the hour I missed this posting on BBC Sport earlier in the week, apologies

Staunton is also poised to bring in former Blackburn player Alan Kelly as
his goalkeeping coach.

More from newsdesks of the world as soon as we have it..

Clive Woodward - the football Legacy

Always nice to see the solution of one of Football's great conundrums. Will Clive Woodward's expertise in the rugby arena translate into the hard nosed unique, "Harry Redknapp self-styled" environment that is Football.

The answer is slowly, and do mean slowly, emerging from Dublin this week. In the wacky world of 24 hour rolling news, it no longer breaks, it emerges. Nothing happens anymore. It is about to happen, sources close to th story add flesh to the bones, it is announced and then finally it's dissected and undermined. Keeps a multitude of Media Studies graduates in a job, it's wonderful.

So to the emergence of the new Irish Football manager, who may or may not be, Steve Staunton. As honest and straightforward a player you are unlikely to have ever watched. Staunton it emerged was about to be named as the FAI's choice to replace Brian Kerr. "Too young" "where's his experience" I hear you cry. So to add some much needed sagicity, Sir Bobby Robson was promptly installed in the news as the guiding hand to the raw potential that Stuanton brings to the party. As week progressed, Alan Carver, Robson's trusty assistant at Newcastle was added to the backroom staff.

Two days later Kevin McDonald former Liverpool player and colleague of Steve Staunton, currently plying his coachiong trade in the west midlands was also being added to the coaching staff.

Now today Thursday the trail has gone cold. Alistair Campbell?, Paul Gascoigne?, John Gregory surely?

The intention surely isn't to create a Woodward style team supporting the team, but keep an eye on the papers tomorrow. Surely the media management expert at the FAI needs to get a grip of the story before they turn into the laughing stock they appeared when it took them so long to sort out Brian Kerr's departure and the Roy Keane in Korea debacle.

Watch this space

Reggie and Ronnie would have loved it

I was touched to read Stephen Gerrard's heartfelt denial of intent on the Kevin Nolan in the recent Reebok encounter between Liverpool and Bolton Wanderers. It is indeed reassuring in world cup year that Gerrard draws the line at intentionally maiming "good scousers".

However it doesn't stop there does it? Oh no! How do you, one, define scouser and two, good and bad?

Long work went on during the 80's to define the very nature of scouseness and "wool" - woolyback culture. To the uninitiated it is akin to the definitions Jew and gentile. Them and Us. The seminal 80's magazine The End - invited its readership to help define where scouse ended and "wool" began, was it Old Swan, Huyton surely not as far as St Helens. The Norman Chester Centre must surely have conducted some form of in-depth study to help bring clarity to this most thorny of issues.

Safe to say that the 69 players competing against England in our Group at World Cup 2006 TM can safely be defined as wools and can expect the full repertoire of the two-footed signature "tackle" he favoured earlier in his career. Only man safe could be that Port Vale geezer for Trinidad, apparently he has an Auntie in Bootle