The manner of Corrie Ndaba’s rise to Republic of Ireland senior status offers great perspective to emerging Irish talent, according to Richie Towell.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday, the Lecce left-back came on as a substitute in the friendly win over Qatar<\/a> to earn his first cap.<\/p>\n The Dubliner came through at Cherry Orchard before leaving for Ipswich in 2019 to start a period in his career where he appeared to be out of sight and out of mind.<\/p>\n Seven loan spells followed for the defender, with no league appearances at his parent club.<\/p>\n Ndaba then moved to Scottish Premiership side Kilmarnock two years ago before getting a move to Serie A last summer for an undisclosed fee<\/a>.<\/p>\n At international level, the 26-year-old was a fringe option in the underage ranks, winning an Ireland under-18 cap ten years ago and receiving a call-up from Stephen Kenny for the ’21s in 2019.<\/p>\n And seven years on, senior recognition has belatedly arrived under Heimir Hallgrimsson and speaking on the RT\u00c9 Soccer Podcast, ex-Boys in Green under-21 international Towell praised Ndaba’s perseverance.<\/p>\n “It’s seven years since he even played for the ’21s, so it’s brilliant,” he said.<\/p>\n \n Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It’s a great perspective for kids as well. People think you go and play under-17s, under-19s, under-21s and then automatically you go into the first team.<\/p>\n “Sometimes it doesn’t work out like that and we see with Corrie he’s gone a little bit of a different path and he’s still ended up in a place where he wants to be and that’s representing Ireland at senior level and it’s brilliant.<\/p>\n “I saw some of his interviews after the game and the pride that he had in pulling on the green jersey. It’s brilliant for him<\/p>\n “And just from the outside for other people looking at him to say to kids, ‘Look, this is how it can go as well. It doesn’t have to be a stepping stone from the ’21s directly into it’.<\/p>\n “Sometimes you might have to go in a round-about way and come into the first team which is brilliant to see.”<\/p>\n Watch Republic of Ireland v Netherlands in FIFA Women’s World Cup qualifying on Friday from 7pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app<\/p>\n Watch Canada v Republic of Ireland in the early hours of Saturday morning (12.15am) on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The manner of Corrie Ndaba’s rise to Republic of Ireland senior status offers great perspective to emerging Irish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-477781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477781","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=477781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}