Writing on the wall for Irish football’s great enigma Sammie Szmodics

Whatever happened to Sammie Szmodics?

When Heimir Hallgrímsson named his Ireland squad last week for the Nations League games against Austria and Kosovo, he didn’t have to field a single question about the Derby County man’s non-selection as he talked to the media in Abbotstown. These days, it would probably be more of a surprise if Szmodics was called up.

When he opened his season with three goals in his first four games for Derby, Szmodics still didn’t earn a recall. So, now that he’s playing in a side that is second from bottom in the Championship – and he has managed just one goal in his last 10 appearances – it seemed unlikely that Hallgrímsson would bring him back into the fold.

But who knows? The Icelander might have had advance notice of Derby’s announcement that Szmodics will be out for at least six weeks with a knee injury that required surgery. It’s the latest in a string of injuries that have blighted him in the last while.

But some of his woes have, of course, been self-inflicted too. There’s a spikiness about the fella that hasn’t always endeared him to managers or team-mates. When he was first called up by Ireland, Szmodics admitted he could be “annoying” around the place, something then-Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna evidently discovered when he shipped him out on loan to Derby 18 months after he was signed for €13 million from Blackburn.

It wasn’t, he said, “a football decision”, adding: “It was a decision that was made in the best interests of our dressingroom culture, of the values of our dressingroom and of our team.” That was all a little hazy, admittedly, but there was a bit of an implication that Szmodics wasn’t, well, a good lad to have around.

And now at Derby, questions are being asked about manager John Eustace continuing to pick him. Szmodics had previously played for Eustace at Blackburn when he was the top scorer in the Championship.

“You’re John Eustace’s boy?” a BBC Radio Derby reporter said to him last week. “I am NOT John Eustace’s boy,” Szmodics replied, the BBC man possibly lucky not to have his microphone inserted where the sun doesn’t shine. He might have deserved it too.

There’s been no end of players down the years whose Republic of Ireland careers never quite got off the ground, despite no little enthusiasm about their arrival on the scene. At 31, it might be safe to say Szmodics now fits into that category.

It’s doubtful that he remembers much about his last appearance in an Irish shirt. It ended with him being stretchered off the pitch and taken to hospital after being knocked unconscious in a collision with a Czech defender.

As penalties loomed in the World Cup playoff semi-final in Prague back in March, Hallgrímsson had brought him on towards the end of extra-time with the intention of him stepping up in the shoot-out, but it wasn’t to be.

Stephen Kenny appeared to tire of Szmodics withdrawing from squads, for injury or personal reasons, after selecting him. John O’Shea gave him his debut, and Hallgrímsson brought his tally of caps to 12.

But all the while, there was a notion he wasn’t entirely committed to the cause – especially when he’d appear for his club days after withdrawing from Irish squads due to injury. “Nothing shy of ridiculous,” he said of “the hate messages me and my family have received over the recent international football concerns . . . question my ability and performance, but never question my professionalism”.

Still, there were those who reckoned Hallgrímsson should cut him adrift. “I think he’s shown a real contempt for the jersey,” said former Shamrock Rovers goalkeeper Barry Murphy on an RTÉ podcast. “I think the manager should be cutting ties with him.”

He was meant to be our version of Craig Bellamy in his prime, without the golf clubs, but it looks like it might never be. Then again, he was once loaned to Braintree Town and survived the ordeal to build a very decent career. Maybe he’ll be Heimir Hallgrímsson’s boy yet.