In March last year, Martin O'Neill disclosed that a relative of Harry Kane had called him to say that the Spurs man was interested in playing for Ireland.
Shortly afterwards, however, O'Neill spotted in a newspaper that Kane had declared his loyalty to England.
As the Connacht Tribune boasts this week, Kane's paternal grandfather - Michael John Kane - is from Connemara. Harry's father Patrick was in Galway this week to visit his relatives in Letterfrack. Harry was last in the area four years back for the funeral of his grandfather.
Patrick told the Connacht Tribune that the Irish football authorities made no attempt to reach him in his younger days. As the paper writes;
Harry Kane was brought into the Tottenham Hotspur at twelve years of age and he has played at all underage levels for England.
He would have been eligible to play for Ireland but his father said he was never approached by the Irish football authorities in his earlier years.
Last year, Eamon Dunphy told us that Ireland could have gotten Harry Kane had we 'been doing our work properly' in recruiting players from English football.
Dunphy credited Jack Charlton's zeal in seeking out English and Scottish born players of Irish extraction in the late 80s with helping to power much of Ireland's success in the golden era.
I think Jack did really well to source players like Ray Houghton, John Aldridge, and John Giles before him, in sourcing Mark Lawrenson and getting him to commit to Ireland. If you see, for example, what Harry Kane is doing in England. We could have got Harry Kane had we been doing our work properly over the last three or four years but we're not.
