SOCCER EURO 2012MOST OF his Aston Villa team-mates may have been glad to see the back of the Premier League campaign, but for Richard Dunne Sunday's defeat by Norwich was another opportunity to clock up some much needed playing time before his attention shifts to the European Championships.

Dunne is due into Dublin for training at the start of next week but before that there will be time for a quick break, just him, his wife, the two kids and possibly, he reveals with a little trepidation, Villa fitness coach Adrian Lamb.

“My wife isn’t too happy about it,” the 32-year-old reveals without really needing to. Well, he adds, Lamb “is thinking of coming over. He’s been a good friend to me, and while I’ve been injured the two of us have worked together so he knows what level I’m at and everything like that. He’ll know how much to push me and how much rest I need. He says he’ll either come or send me on a programme that I’ll do myself.”

Helen Dunne, one imagines, favours the latter option and having sounded upbeat about the Villa staffer coming along, the Republic of Ireland defender suddenly comes across like a man who remembers how the idea went down at home.

“I need to have time with the family,” says Dunne, who was speaking at the launch of the Three on the Quay fanzones which are to be held on Ireland’s matchdays at George’s Dock in Dublin. “We’re going to be away for a long time. They’re as important as anyone. My kids are three and six. So to be away for a month is a long time. So to have that week to stay with them is important.”

That he appears virtually certain now to be fit is a major relief to Ireland fans who, having witnessed him keep the Russians at bay almost single-handedly for long spells, are under no illusions about how important he will be against the likes of Italy and, particularly, Spain.

First up, though, will be a reunion with his former Everton team-mate, Slaven Bilic, who Dunne clearly remembers with particular fondness and whose style of management he obviously admires. “He was a really nice fella,” says Dunne with genuine warmth, “sort of as he comes across as a manager; cool and relaxed. He was brilliant when he was at Everton, he was a great player obviously, but everyone thought he was such a nice person to have around the place, easy going; really top class.

“Nothing would faze him; he just gets along with his job really taking everything in his stride. And since he’s taken over Croatia they’ve been brilliant, they’ve really progressed. They seem to have a good bond between the whole group, which is a big thing for him. He trusts them; when they beat England at Wembley I think he let them all go shopping the day before so I think they trust and respect him back.”

Bilic was lampooned by one paper last week for suggesting that Croatia need to beat Ireland because of the quality of the opponents that follow, but Dunne clearly sees the assessment as reasonable. He sees the Croatia game as key to Irish prospects of progressing from the group as well and the team’s ability to deal with players like Luka Modric and Nikica Jelavic as important to the chances of securing a positive result on June 10th in Poznan.

Trapattoni, though, will not tailor the Irish game to particular opponents. “He knows what they do,” says Dunne of the manager, “but he works on us as a team and making sure we’re organised, that we’re where we should be when we don’t have the ball so that in that way we sort of nullify all of their players’ threat rather than just the one.”

If things go well in Poland and, hopefully, Ukraine it would be hard, one imagines, for Dunne to walk away from the international game and yet, he acknowledges, on both the personal and professional fronts there are arguments to be made for not maintaining his current level of commitment.

“I don’t know how I’m going to feel after it,” he says. “The big thing is in two years; what will I feel like and whether I’ll be able to do it. I don’t know. For me, it’s just about this one and whatever happens after that, happens.

“If it goes bad,” he observes, “I might want to put that right. But at the moment, I’m still unsure about it. I don’t want to think about not playing for Ireland, I only want to think about this.”

Given the enormous physicality of his game and how it has taken its toll over the last few year, Dunne could be forgiven for being a little concerned about what his club, Aston Villa, might make of his continued involvement at international level. “If I did retire, it will be with a heavy heart. You want to carry on forever but you’ve got to be sensible and it might not be my decision, the manager might have different ideas or different players coming through,” says Dunne.

His family will have something to say about it all too. “Having young kids (when you’re away so much) is tough. But they’re changing the dates of the fixtures for the campaigns so it won’t be such a long time away.”

A fair few Ireland fans will be hoping Mrs Dunne sees it just the same way.