EMMET MALONEtalks to the Ireland defender ahead of the squad announcement for Euro 2012

THERE’LL BE familiar faces, of course, when the Euro 2012 players named in Giovanni Trapattoni’s squad train together for the first time on May 17th but Sean St Ledger will be one of the select few who will be expected to actually start Ireland’s games at the European Championships. It’s a status to be cherished in the build-up to the tournament but a slightly odd one, he knows, for a player who has struggled this year to nail down his place at a club that failed even to make the promotion play-offs.

The 27-year-old’s club career has stuttered along since he first made his breakthrough at Peterborough United the best part of a decade ago with a couple of promising moves quickly leading to disappointment. Now, he finds himself on the brink of playing on one of the game’s greatest stages, while having to field questions about whether he will be moved on by Leicester City over the close season.

“Frustrating,” is the way he describes his ups and downs at club level during a promotional visit to Carton House yesterday but, having been impressively frank about his failings in the past, he feels his form has been decent if a little inconsistent and hopes his future is secure.

“I love playing for Leicester City,” he says, “it’s a great football club and there are great people working there so I think it’s down to me really to try and prove to the manager (Nigel Pearson) that I am worthy of a starting place.

“Next year,” he acknowledges, “there will be changes; comings and goings so I will just have to wait and see.” Reports of an impending move, he insists, however, are news to him and his preference, unless told to go, is to stick around and fight for his place.

In the January window he was in a fair bit of demand and was on the verge of leaving his house to join up with the Ipswich squad at their team hotel ahead of a game at Birmingham that he thought would mark the start of a loan spell at the club. Leicester called to say that a spate of injuries had scuppered the move though, and from that to the end of the season he featured in 19 games, a decent foundation on which to build he hopes. “I am obviously at the age, though, where I want to play every game,” he says, “and keep my international career going.”

With Ireland his status as Richard Dunne’s partner at the heart of the team’s defence is fairly assured at present and the prospect of testing himself against players he normally only sees on TV has been exciting him in recent weeks as Poland and the Euros really started to loom large.

“It’s weird,” he says, “because after Estonia it seemed so far away but now it’s two or three weeks away from meeting up. The excitement is unreal. The hardest thing will be the week training before it, the anticipation of going into a tournament. It will really sink in when we get to Poland. It was so far away but now it’s so close.

“I am watching in detail. You have got Jelavic at Everton and he is scoring goals at the moment. I am watching him to see what he is all about. He has come to the Premier League and done very well.

“And Torres is hitting form. I know that much. We played against him a couple of weeks ago in the FA Cup. He wasn’t bad, like. Everyone is pleased for him. He has worked hard and people have written him off too early. He is showing the form at the moment that Chelsea paid that money for.

“I’m looking forward to it. These are the kind of players you want to play against.”

Keep them quiet and Pearson might well appreciate him a little more next season but a more immediate concern is to repay the faith that Trapattoni has shown since handing him his debut against Nigeria at Craven Cottage less than three years ago.

“He has had a lot of belief in me. I didn’t get a call-up for a long time and you start to ask yourself: ‘Am I going to get back in the squad?’ Fortunately, I played in the friendly and I got back in from there.

“That’s down to him because my club form, when I was at Middlesbrough and Preston, wasn’t great and he could have left me out. But when you have a manager who has faith in you it makes you believe in yourself a bit more.”

He has, to be fair, worked hard for the Italian, taking on board everything that the veteran coach has asked of him and simply being there sometimes when some, Trapattoni felt, got their priorities wrong.

“There were people who didn’t show up in the summer,” he says of the post season games last year when the manager criticised several players for failing to travel, “and if you look at the bigger picture they wouldn’t have thought that we would be going to a European Championship. They’re the ones who are missing out now.”