{"id":181237,"date":"2025-12-08T15:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T15:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/181237\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T15:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T15:27:08","slug":"stephen-hunt-some-of-irelands-brightest-stars-still-have-big-questions-to-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/181237\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Hunt: Some of Ireland\u2019s brightest stars still have big questions to answer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Former Republic midfielder\u2019s optimism following euphoria of heroic World Cup wins over Portugal and Hungary last month is tempered by some trepidation\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Troy Parrott\u2019s exploits for Ireland captured the public imagination. Photo: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/f8d5e3d0-bdef-4e81-b906-539f5fd31977.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Troy Parrott\u2019s exploits for Ireland captured the public imagination. Photo: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">As former Ireland winger Stephen Hunt made his way to the Aviva Stadium for Ireland\u2019s World Cup qualifier against Portugal last month, he was struck by a recurring image.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">One after the next, young Irish kids heading into a must-win game for their home nation were performing Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s \u2018Siuuu\u2019 celebration as they counted down to the moment when they could see their hero in the flesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Republic midfielder\u2019s optimism following euphoria of heroic World Cup wins over Portugal and Hungary last month is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,898,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-181237","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-latest-news-ticker","11":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}