General
- Thursday July 12th, 2007 @ 8:13
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Article from Official Tottenham Hotspur website.
Chris Hughton will renew acquaintances with a friend and former colleague when we travel to Dublin for our second friendly of the campaign against St Patrick's Athletic on Thursday, kick-off 7.45pm.
Our assistant boss will meet up again with Brian Kerr, the former national manager of the Republic whom he assisted for two years.
Kerr is now Director of Football at St Patrick's and overseeing a side currently on the up in Irish football - they are currently second in the eircom League by a point to Drogheda having lost just four of 17 games so far.
Chris, capped 53 times by the Republic, said: "St Patrick's is a traditional club in Dublin and most people will have heard of them because it's where Paul McGrath used to play and he's obviously seen as one of the Irish greats and many believe the best player to come out of Ireland.
"In recent years I've had a very close association with Brian Kerr in my work with the Republic Of Ireland national team and Brian was manager of St Pats some time ago.
"He's always had a good feeling towards the club and is now back there as Director of Football.
"It's great for me to go back to Dublin and apart from Robbie, I doubt if any of the lads would have played there before.
"Richmond Park is a small stadium, as are most in the Republic, and it will be a full house and a fantastic atmosphere. They love the game and there has always been a high interest in the English league because such a lot of the talent ends up there. The league is of a good standard and this will be a decent test for us."
Team News
Younes Kaboul and Gareth Bale are in the travelling party for the friendly against St Patrick's in Dublin on Thursday.
The newcomers are joined by returning internationals Paul Robinson, Michael Dawson, Jermaine Jenas, Didier Zokora and Dimitar Berbatov in a squad of 20 as we take on the team currently second in the eircom League standings.
However, Martin Jol was quick to point out that the later arrivals to pre-season training might not take any part in the friendly at Richmond Park.
Martin explained: "The likes of Berbatov and Jenas have only had a couple of sessions and need more work, especially on conditioning, so they probably won't be involved but you never know. In these periods you can pick up little knocks and niggling injuries, so I won't say that we won't use them, but there are 16 players that we will use and the others will come and train with us.
"It will be a different team that played at Stevenage on Saturday but players like Phil Ifil, Jacques Maghoma, Charlie Daniels and Jamie O'Hara will still be involved."
