Sweet start to Swedish trip

In stark contrast to the chaos which surrounded the Irish party's touchdown in Nigeria for the World Youth Championships in April, Brian Kerr and his Republic of Ireland squad arrived in Linkoping, Sweden, last night without any major hitches.

Two players, Home Farm's Padraig Drew and Greg O'Halloran of Cork City, continued to suffer the effects of minor bugs over the course of the journey, but neither is causing any serious concern to Kerr or Noel O'Reilly ahead of Monday evening's opening game against Spain.

Given the unforgiving format of the competition the game will be a vital one for the two nations, one of which comes to the tournament as defending champions the other, after Nigeria, as the world's leading power in the underage game.

"With so many players to choose from we really wouldn't expect them (Spain) to have too many players from the trip to Africa," said Irish coach, O'Reilly, "but we've seen the second leg of their qualification play-off against Norway and there's no doubt that they're a very good-looking side."

Monday's game, as well as Friday's clash with Italy (kick-off is 5.15 p.m. Irish time for both) are amongst the games being carried live by Eurosport, who will also broadcast next weekend's third place playoff and final, scheduled for Sunday and Monday respectively.

With a somewhat more limited pool of talent to choose from than some of their rivals, there are plenty of familiar faces amongst the Irish squad. Joe Murphy, Liam Miller and Graham Barrett, each of whom played in the gold medal winning side at last year's under-16 championships in Scotland, all make the step up to Youth level.

No fewer than five players, meanwhile, including Jason Gavin, Gary Doherty and Gerry Crossley, are back after last year's victory over Germany in the final.