McCarthy Throws Dig At Martin O'Neill Over Declan Rice's England Switch | Balls.ie

When it comes to the current state of the Ireland team, it's fair to say that Martin O'Neill did not do a whole lot to set the side up for future success during his time in charge.

His spell with Ireland was pretty fruitful early on, leading the team to Euro 2016 and then a play-off for the 2018 World Cup. However, his tenure from that point onwards was a depressing one for everyone involved.

By the time he finally left towards the end of 2018, the team was a shambles. Not only had they completely lost any sort of identity on the pitch, but his failure to nurture any young players during his time in charge left the side in desperate need of an overhaul.

Of course, two of the young players he failed to embed into the side would go on to play their international football elsewhere. Both Jack Grealish and Declan Rice came through the Irish youth system before switching allegiances to England and becoming £100million players at club level.

Grealish played with Ireland up to U21 level, with Rice making three senior appearances in friendly games before deciding his future laid elsewhere. As it turns out, Martin O'Neill's successor was not all that pleased with his handling of those situations.

Mick McCarthy throws dig at Martin O'Neill over Declan Rice switch

Declan Rice was technically still an Ireland player when Mick McCarthy inherited the job from Martin O'Neill in 2019, although he was in the midst of deciding his international future. The manager would go on to be unsuccessful in his attempts to get the player to commit to the Irish cause.

Speaking on the Quickly Kevin; will he score? podcast, McCarthy hinted that Martin O'Neill had not handled the Rice and Grealish situations well enough during his time in charge.

I just inherited that one at the very last knockings of Declan. I went to meet him and he’s such a lovely guy.

Really sad that… he’d obviously made that decision then, or was in the process of making that decision.

Looking at him now, he’s made his decision, it’s the right decision for him. He’s thriving on it. The same with Jack Grealish. We should have played them before we did.

You can play more games now. It used to be one game, if you played one competitive game, then you were deemed to be of that nationality.

And of course we never picked Jack or Declan to play in one of them, which is sad. We’d be a much better team if those two were with us...

You make decisions on the game you are playing. I’d have to say I have given people caps, yes I have.

I’ve put them on to make sure they are going to play for us. I have done it. I’m not going to lie about that. Some of them will be delighted that I did because they’ve gone on to have good careers.

Martin O'Neill has spoken about this matter a number of times in recent years, where he has essentially said that he could not convince the likes of Declan Rice and Jack Grealish to play for Ireland if they felt they were English.

However, Rice in particular was available for selection for Ireland for quite some time, a period when O'Neill opted not to play him in a competitive fixture.

Mick McCarthy certainly feels as though his time in charge of the team would have gone smoother had the situation been handled better.