Aston Villa striker Scott Hogan looks almost certain to declare to play for the Republic of Ireland after holding a meeting with manager Martin O'Neill.
The 24-year-old frontman qualifies to play for Ireland through three of his grand-parents and is reported to have applied for an Irish passport.
Hogan's international clearance looks set to come too late for him to be involved in next month's World Cup qualifying games with Georgia and Serbia.
O'Neill has held talks with Hogan's representatives in the past but the Villa striker had put off making a decision on his international future as he continued to recover from two major knee injuries.
However Hogan and O'Neill have held face-to-face talks in which the Ireland manager was able to convince the player that his international future lies with Ireland.
"He's keen, he's very keen," O'Neill was quoted as saying in several Irish newspapers. "I want the players to have a genuine enthusiasm for playing for the Republic of Ireland because I don't want to lose that.
"I think you'd want to see that there's a genuine feeling that 'I want to come, I want to play, I want to try and make the grade at international level and play for us'. That's all the encouragement I want.
"Scott is very enthusiastic about doing it. He's mentioned his reasons before and I think he felt he probably felt that he might not have been up to it at that stage because he might not have been fit enough. There seemed to be an impasse. There's no point in me going into that detail but it certainly wasn't from the player."
