Ireland's European Youth Championship winning side of a year ago are set to make a collective reappearance in Macedonia this afternoon with seven of the panel that returned triumphant from Cyprus taking the field for the last of this campaign's under-21 games.
Thomas Heary, Richie Partridge and Liam George are among the seven players handed debuts at this level by manager Ian Evans in a side which contains only two players who hadn't previously played under Brian Kerr.
Clive Clarke, a first team regular at Stoke City now, is another of the newcomers, while Colin Healy and Gary Doherty are also set to be rewarded for their efforts at other levels in the green jersey.
"The main interest in the game is to see how these lads do," said Evans who has retained only Alex O'Reilly, Martin Rowlands, Barry Quinn and Andy O'Brien from the squad which lost its way so badly against Yugoslavia and Croatia last month.
The game is of little real significance for either side with the possibility of qualification for next year's Olympics now a distant memory. But yesterday there was clearly a hint of some needle going into the game with Evans, who this week had his contract extended, admitting that the decision to play it in the mountains more than 100 miles from Skopje is probably connected with the FAI's staging of the two side's first meeting in Galway.
"It's a pity that they seem to be reacting like that but we just have to get on with it as best we can," said the Welshman, who will be hoping for a more convincing performance from his new players than the 0-0 draw, subsequently turned into a 3-0 win by UEFA, produced in Galway.
REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: O'Reilly (West Ham); Heary (Huddersfield), O'Brien (Bradford City), Gavin (Middlesbrough), Clarke (Stoke); Rowlands (Brentford), Quinn (Coventry), Healy (Celtic); Partridge (Liverpool), Doherty (Luton), George (Luton).
