On 7th October 2006, Ireland lined up against Cyprus with a midfield consisting of Kevin Kilbane, Aiden McGeady, Stephen Ireland and Damien Duff. In hindsight it was a ludicrously top heavy team and we were lambs to the slaughter but we're not here to bring up the ghosts of that 5-2 defeat.
Instead we're here to take a look at what should have happened to that team. Kilbane and Duff were the relative old timers. We knew they weren't going to be around forever, the other two midfields that night however, had their entire careers ahead of them.
Stephen Ireland had just broken into the senior squad and grabbed the first of four international goals in Nicosia that night. McGeady was rather more at home in the Irish setup at that stage having made his debut all the way back in 2004. The best part of ten years has passed since that sobering night and the difference between what was expected from McGeady and Ireland and what has been produced is vast.
They're not the same player of course and the story isn't the same but it just so happens that in this transfer window, their career have both come to a crossroads. Stephen Ireland finds himself largely frozen out of things with Stoke with the prospect of a move to Abu Dhabi becoming increasingly likely.
It's being widely reported that Ireland is weighing up an offer from Al Jazira Club that would presumably make him an awful lot of money. McGeady on the other hand is unlikely to make too much additional money from his move but what he would gain is playing time with a place at Euro 2016 in need of grasping.
There were reports that Sheffield Wednesday were ready to offer him a way out of Everton but now it looks like Blackburn may have moved to the top of the queue for a player who has been told by Roberto Martinez that his Everton prospects are bleak in the build up this summer's tournament in France. It's blatantly stating the obvious but this is not how it should have gone.
If someone had said back in 2006, that Ireland would be going to Euro 2016 having defeated the world champions in qualifying you probably would have thanked the football gods that we had been given Ireland and McGeady to lead us.
Instead one of them has six caps and while the other has a very healthy 79, the vast majority of Irish fans will look back on those caps and still see potential to have done more. There's no need to go into the reasons why Ireland's career went the way it did but for all the suggestions that he was thinking of his club career at the expense of his country, you have to think as he contemplates leaving European football before his 30th birthday, that didn't work out too well.
As for McGeady, there's still time. Although a move down to the Championship may not be ideal, it should be looked at it terms of opportunity as opposed to embarrassment. O'Neill wants to take him to France, that's abundantly clear and if he can get some game time for Blackburn or Wednesday, he's going to be given the best possible window to show that he's capable of playing at a higher level.
