O’Neill plays down knocks to Jeff Hendrick and James McCarthy

James McCarthy and Jeff Hendrick emerged as minor injury concerns on day two of the Irish squad's preparations for this weekend's games against Gibraltar and Georgia but if Martin O'Neill was actually worried then at least Darron Gibson provided a bit of a distraction.

The manager used to have something of a reputation for attending criminal trials and with Hendrick and Anthony Stokes (who is on standby for the squad this week) currently facing criminal charges too, he could presumably mix a bit of business and pleasure at some stage soon if he fancies it.

Yesterday, he seemed a bit bemused by it all when the subject cropped up, observing, with a suppressed smile: “We might just have a bad bunch, y’know? Statistically speaking, it’s not great, is it?”

Traffic offences

Asked whether Gibson’s sentence, which O’Neill had not heard yet, for serious traffic offences might affect his international career, the manager embarked on something of a routine: “Yeah,” he said, “if he goes to prison.

“It’s a slight worry. I just don’t want to be going to Wormwood Scrubs and picking him up. ‘Can he just have a day out here, cos we have a game’. Wormwood Scrubs, though....I suppose it would be quite handy to Heathrow Airport. Unless they stick him into Strangeways or something. But then you could get a flight from Manchester, I suppose...”

Gibson, whose career at Everton has been punctuated by various injury setbacks, hasn’t featured for Ireland since the away game to Scotland in which he played particularly poorly and O’Neill wondered aloud about whether his overall form might be linked to a wider failure to get back to full fitness.

“On a serious note, the number of games that he has not played in the last couple of years is kind of worrying,” he said. “And you get to that stage when you are never properly fit. And it looks like Darron, for one reason or another, has not been properly fit for some quite considerable time.

“That’s something that he would have to address on his own at club level . . . . Obviously, he has had very little football probably for close on two years and it’s not as if to say that he is 21 or 22 at this stage.

“If there are genuine reasons for the injuries then that’s fine,” he continued. “But if it’s something that he is not doing well enough himself then that is something he would have to address himself.”

Scan done

As for the injuries to the players who trained yesterday, O’Neill seemed pretty relaxed about the situation. Hendrick, he said, had gone over on his ankle during the session and seems to be the more serious of the two with the manager suggesting that the midfielder’s progress over the next day or two would have to be monitored. The decision to have a scan done on McCarthy’s knee, meanwhile, seemed to be at the request of his club.

“I can’t envisage a problem at the moment,” he said. “If it is, it might not be anything to do with the scan. Obviously your concern would be training, like something that happened with Jeff today. I think Jeff hopes he will be okay himself but those would be the things that concern me in the next couple of days of training.

Asked whether there is perhaps some lingering mistrust on Everton’s part after Aiden McGeady had to have a pain -killing injection in order to play in the Poland game last season, O’Neill said: “No, we’re fine, absolutely fine now, no problem. I think this is something they wanted to do and our doctor is just falling in line with. Overall the message is pretty clear and James is happy with it. He did a little; he didn’t do much yesterday but he did a little bit and today he trained but he’s going there anyway and he’s feeling fine.”

Amongst the other midfield options for O’Neill this time is Eunan O’Kane, the 25-year-old midfielder from Derry whose early season impact for Bournemouth has left him believing that anything might be possible right now.

“I managed to get myself in the team at Bournemouth, played in the game an Anfield and hopefully I gave a good account of myself. Fortunately it was just before this squad was announced so it put me in his plans for this trip.

“I don’t think you place limitations on yourself. If you start to do that, you get comfortable at the level you are at and you stop progressing. I made the decision that there were no limitations on where I could go; what level I could get to in my club career or at international level and that has benefited me on the journey to get here.”