HEIMIR HALLGRÍMSSON has explained why he held fire with Tom Cannon.
Cannon scored four goals for Stoke City in their 6-1 win over Portsmouth on Wednesday night.
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Andy Moran also scored for the hosts with Mark O’Mahony grabbing the consolation for the visitors.
Those pair were both called up by Ireland under-21 boss Jim Crawford but there was no room for Cannon – who made his senior debut against Portugal in June – in Hallgrímsson’s squad.
Hallgrímsson said: “We had kind of selected the squad prior to the matches.
“I don’t think we would have changed it but it is really nice, we are so happy for him to get the goals.
Now he is starting to play on a regular basis, hopefully he will continue.
“It was nice to see an Irish player score four goals in one game but you could see in the game that he was really tired in the end so he is not fully match fit.
“But hopefully he will continue scoring and he is in our back-up squad and if we need it, it is easy to call up a guy who scored four goals yesterday.”
He was not the only player left disappointed by Hallgrímsson’s selection with Matt Doherty, Alan Browne, Callum Robinson and Jake O’Brien all dropped.
Doherty’s omission came despite the fact another right-back, captain Séamus Coleman, had already been ruled out through injury.
Hallgrímsson explained: “First of all, we know that Matt and Séamus have been here for a long time in the squad, our most-experienced full-backs, our best full-backs playing at the highest level for a long time.
“But unfortunately they will not play forever, so we need to have a Plan B if they are not there.
“My job is to get this team to the World Cup in the US in 2026 and given that next year, 2025, if we end up in a group with five nations, all our FIFA windows next year will be official World Cup matches.
“So this is the only chance to experiment, to give players a chance to show what they can do. That is the reason we opted to go for other players at this stage.
“I called Matt yesterday. Obviously he deserves that. He was not happy, of course, he wants to play every game for Ireland.
“But I just assured him that it’s not like we are leaving him out, we’re just testing other players.
“Because of his experience as well, [we decided] not to bring him in to have him on the bench. It’s better just to give him this camp off.”
That will leave Festy Ebosele and Andrew Omobamidele vying to play on the right side of defence against Finland and Greece.
He also handed a first senior call-up to Luton Town centre-half Mark McGuinness and recalls to Ipswich Town’s Jack Taylor, Finn Azaz of Middlesbrough and fit-again pair Josh Cullen and Mikey Johnston.
