Damien Delaney picked up his second Irish cap at Craven Cottage tonight, meanwhile there’s good news on Martin Rowlands’ injury

The Republic of Ireland were lucky to escape with a draw at the weekend against Serbia but they picked up a win, their first in eight matches, against Columbia in London on Thursday night thanks to a scruffy third minute goal from Tottenham’s Robbie Keane.

Columbia were hugely entertaining to watch and although they made a slow start and fell behind early on they quickly hit their stride and can count themselves unfortunate not to have at least drawn. Their propensity to end their wonderful, flowing moves with a shot over the bar from 40 yards meant a lack of reward for some outstanding build up play.

The QPR interest came at left back, Damien Delaney wasn’t quite as impressive as he had been at the weekend but still looked right at home despite the quality of the opposition. One crunching tackle in the second half was typical of the man and Trapattoni would have to be a ruthless man to drop him from the team for the forthcoming World Cup qualifiers. For me he’s gone from not even being in the squad to the first choice left back this summer.

Martin Rowlands hasn’t had a chance to impress though because of an ankle injury picked up at the team’s Portuguese training camp. There were worrying rumours and stories floating about at the end of last week that it could be a bad injury and affect his pre-season but the club confirmed this week that he has only sprained his ankle ligaments and a three week rest with treatment should see the injury nicely healed for the start of pre-season training at the end of June.

Physio Paul Hunter told the official website: “He’ll undergo treatment in the coming days but considering the type of injury he sustained the results from the scan are as good as we could have expected.”

Rowlands is suspended for the first three games of next season after his sending off on the final game of last season.

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