Stirling not looking for England honours

The headline is slightly misleading (not written by me), but here is my interview with Middlesex and Ireland's Paul Stirling:

http://deepextracover.com/home/sterling-not-looking-for-england-honours/

I hope he won't be lost to Ireland, like Morgan/Rankin/Jois, or in Zimbabwe's case, Ervine and recently, Garry Ballance.

I do too, as I feel that he'll struggle to ever be a Test player (yet to play Champ) and any one-day appearances would be risky.

Others have found that out already. Ed Joyce played internationals for England for only a 6 month period, but had to wait 4 years to get back playing for Ireland. Rankin too has quit Ireland to concentrate on getting in the England side - something which I'd say is quite a way away.

He'd probably be best to follow the Ryan ten Doeschate route and not think too much about playing for a Full Member (RTD could have played for SA).

If Ireland were to pick all the players available to them (or who would be available if you could play at a higher level more regularly) then you would regularly beat the likes of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh IMO.

1.Joyce
2.Porterfield
3.Stirling
4.Morgan
5.Marshall
6.O'Brien (wk)
7.Mooney/Cusack
8.Johnston
9.Murtagh
10.Rankin
11.Dockrell

I think the current team would quite easily compete with Bangladesh and Zimbabwe and would be at least as competitive as Bangladesh against the top 8.

Morgan and Marshall won't realistically play for Ireland now - Marshall is past his best and, even were Morgan to change his mind, he has to wait four years.

The difficulty will be developing the youth to ensure that they produce a further strong generation behind them. Zimbabwe and Kenya have both produced 1 strong generation followed by little else. Its encouraging that a number of young Irish players (McCarter, Balbirnie etc.) are already signed with counties but in the long run they need some sort of domestic FC tournament of their own.