Harry Crawford: He's Irish you know; well, through his grandparents
It's the Under-19 Euro Championships Elite Stages being held in the Ukraine and striker Harry Crawford, having already forced himself into the first team, continues his climb up the the career ladder by joining the country of his grandparents birth in the competition, his grandmother being from Dublin.
Harry told www.southendunited.co.uk: "It's a great honour and a really good way for me to end the season. I fly out on Wednesday to Kiev and we'll spend the first seven days in a training camp. Then we play England in our first game in a really tough group."
Here's hoping he wins his first battle, against the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland! The Northern Irish under-23 side's fixture against Poland was called off today as they couldn't leave the airport!
Fixtures
Wed. May 26 - England
Fri. May 28 - Ukraine
Mon. May 31 - Bosnia-Herzegovina
The finals will be in France later this year.
Good luck to Harry who will be in a squad full of Premiership players including Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal.
The latter not to surprising as it's youth team boss is Gunners and Irish legend Liam Brady, and could there be another 'George Best' amongst the representatives of ManU!