Anthony Stokes tries in vain to explain

Article from The telegraph:

The Dubliner returns to his hometown this weekend for challenge matches against Inter Milan and an Irish League Select but he believes that it could be a long time before he returns on international duty.

Stokes angered the 72 year-old in May when he withdrew from the squad for the Carling Nations Cup matches against Northern Ireland and Scotland and the friendly against Italy.

He maintains that he had legitimate reasons for pulling out but his cause wasn’t helped when the Irish won all three games without his help.

“It’ll be brilliant to play for Celtic in Dublin because my family don’t get the chance to come over that often," he said.

“All my friends will be coming along as well so I’m really looking forward to it. There are a lot of good young players in the League of Ireland as well as many young ones like myself who’ve left and had good careers.

“I saw the furore in the papers and, obviously, I was involved with that but it’s just one of those things: come the end of the season people pick up niggles and knocks and you don’t have a lot of time off.

“That’s just part and parcel of football, I suppose. You name 30-man squads for these end-of-season games and the more players you have the more niggles you’ll have."

Stokes hinted that he’s been the victim of a campaign of misinformation, with FAI sources suggesting he didn’t care about playing for his country.

“I was asked about it once or twice and I didn’t really say too much but I never came out and said that I was too tired: I think that came from the Irish camp," he said.

“I just didn’t feel that I needed to come out and explain every reason for my not going. It was a short run-in and we only had three weeks off after a long, hard season and players need to rest up sometimes.

“With me not going to that last squad I’ll struggle to get in again. I want to play for Ireland but I can see with Trapattoni there that I’m going to struggle.

“There’s nothing I can really do about that other than concentrate on my club form and see where that takes me. Hopefully, I’ll get the call but if it doesn’t come then there’s nothing more I can do."

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What an idiot!
He says it wasnt that he was tired, and then he says that he was tired.
Thankfully, we have a couple of decent strikers ahead of him.