Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Packing a Brady punch..
ROBBIE BRADY will be tasked with creating a spark to bank Ireland another three points. The Burnley ace was banned for the 0-0 draw with Wales in March and Ireland clearly missed his creativity as they laboured against their derby rivals. But Brady is back in harness this weekend and dusted off the cobwebs with a good performance in the 3-1 friendly win over Uruguay last Sunday. He started on the right side of an attacking three behind lone striker Jon Walters and he could remain there for the big one as Martin O’neill juggles his pack to include both the Euro 2016 hero and in-form James Mcclean. Yesterday, Roy Keane said: “It’s a big plus for us (to have Brady back). “Look at any big match, whatever about people’s movement, if the set-piece delivery is not right you’re wasting your time. “Robbie’s delivery is as good as anyone out there.” At times in the Uruguay game, Ireland played better football than they have in most of their qualifiers. But it was only a friendly and Uruguay didn’t hide the fact in the build-up that they didn’t want to be here. Still, can this Irish team reproduce that sort of performance in games that actually matter? Keane said: “You would hope so but it’s a different animal – different pressures, different emotions on Sunday, different expectations. “When you look back on your career, you’re never defined by friendly matches. It’s alright saying you played lovely moments of football but you need to do that on Sunday. You have to find a way to win and that could be a set piece or someone producing a bit of quality.”