James McCarthy Not Ruled Out Of Wales Clash
Republic of Ireland boss Martin O'Neill, as ever, played his team selection cards close to his chest but he did reveal one tit-bit.
Unsurprisingly, the skipper Seamus Coleman is a confirmed starter while his Everton team-mate James McCarthy is also in the running.
Coleman has overcome a minor ankle knock but McCarthy's issue is a little less straightforward.
The 26-year-old has been sidelined with a hamstring complaint and has not featured for the Toffees since he came off the bench against Spurs in the Premier League on March 5."Yes he's improving, improving very quickly which is good news", O'Neill said at today's pre-match press conference.
"He's done some work today as well too and we'll see how he is this afternoon, see how he's recovered from that. But he's feeling much, much better."
Would that deter the Irish gaffer from picking the midfielder?
"It wouldn't really, no, if he hasn't played for two-and-a-half weeks and he feels ok. I think that, that wouldn't necessarily deter me from doing it.
"Naturally I think you would think about the length of time someone maybe could last on the field, maybe not having worked for a few weeks.
"In general, he's usually a pretty fit lad."
So Coleman is fit but today looked to be suffering from Bale fatigue!
Welsh wonder Gareth Bale has been mentioned, just a few times this week and Coleman spoke about facing the flying winger when he was still at Spurs."I think everyone knows his story by now. He was a left-back, moved to left-wing and when he was doing really well against the likes of Inter Milan and that how he's a right midfielder.
"Whenever we played it was a doubling up job with Phil Neville and had to be done but he's really kicked on and he's gone on to great things and I wish him well of course."
"We're a team who've played against big players in the past. I remember when we played Sweden in the summer all the talk was about Zlatan.
"It's quite similar this time but we're fully focused on our job and looking forward to the game."
"We were getting asked the same questions in the summer about certain players and it's just that you've got another ten players on the pitch, you've got to worry about.
We know he's a world class player and we're going to have to be careful and get tight to him in certain areas but we can't just fully focus on Gareth Bale.
We've got a lot of good players and, as I said, we need to make sure they worry about us as well."