In celebration of EA SPORTS™'s St.Patrick's Cup which ran over the Paddy's Day weekend, we asked you to help us pick Ireland's strongest team on FIFA 16.
EA SPORTS were kind enough to give us the best Irish players in the game to build our dream Irish squad (including the legend item of Roy Keane!) and try to win the tournament, and if you missed out on the action you can check it out here:
They also gave us tickets to Ireland vs Switzerland, and Ireland vs Slovakia, as well as two squads of Ireland's best Ultimate Team players, to give away to those who voted, and since the winners have now been contacted we can reveal who made our readers' XI:
Goalkeeper: Kieran Westwood
With 41% of the votes, Sheffield Wednesday's Westwood was the most popular choice, beating out Darren Randolph who claimed 28% of the votes.
Left Back: Robbie Brady
Norwich City's Robbie Brady was the clear choice at left-back, as he claimed a whopping 88% of votes. The next closest was Gillingham's Bradley Garmston, who was given 7% of the votes by shameless pace abusers.
Centre Back: Ciaran Clark
The Aston Villa man is comfortably the best Irish CB in terms of stats on FIFA 16, and sure enough, he got 49% of the votes.
Centre Back: John O'Shea
The first difference from our own selection comes in the form of John O'Shea. We opted for the pace of Marc Wilson, but O'Shea's experience saw him receive 23% of the votes, with the next most popular choice being Damien Delaney of Crystal Palace.
Right Back: Seamus Coleman
By far the easiest choice in our polls, Killybegs' own Seamus Coleman commanded 98% of our readers votes, the other 2% going to Cyrus Christie presumably just for the laugh.
Centre Mid: Roy Keane
With 77% of the votes, legend Roy Keane comfortably took his rightful place in Ireland's virtual midfield.
Centre Mid: James McCarthy
Alongside Roy in the engine room is Everton's James McCarthy who is probably one of the more underrated players in FIFA as a whole. He took home 9% of the votes which was more than enough.
Centre Mid: Wes Hoolahan
Asked to operate in a deeper role because FIFA is a video game, Wes' passing will be invaluable to anyone using him and he snuck into the side with 5% of the overall votes.
Left Forward: Shane Long
Operating just to the left of a three-man strikeforce, Shane Long comfortably claimed his place in the team with 69% of the votes. And it had to be that way, Long is fantastic on FIFA 16.
Right Forward: Jon Walters
Big Jon Walters will be running channels to his heart's content after he claimed his place with 9% of the votes for attacking players. We didn't use him enough in our tournament, so it's good to see him start here.
Centre Forward: Robbie Keane
Captain fantastic, coming in with 18% of the votes was Robbie Keane. His stats made this one a certainty, it was just a question of how he is used.
Here's how our readers' virtual lineup looks:
And for comparison, here is Ireland's likely strongest lineup based on O'Neill's team selection in the big games:
What this tells us is that Richard Keogh, and Jeff Hendrick are criminally underrated on FIFA, with the Derby County men not getting the credit for their performance at international level as both contributed greatly to Ireland's qualification for Euro 2016.
