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John Caulfield says that Cork City will take pride in Sean Maguire's Ireland call-up - even though it happened after his move to Preston North End.

The 23-year-old was called into Martin O'Neill's 39-strong provisional squad yesterday for next month's World Cup qualifiers against Georgia and Serbia.

But there was criticism of O'Neill for waiting until the Kilkenny-born striker had moved cross-channel to include him, rather than while he was on fire for the table-topping Leesiders.

(Image: ©INPHO/Bryan Keane)

Maguire's 20 league goals propelled Cork to within touching distance of the Premier Division title before he left last month.

But O'Neill said on Monday that his hat-trick scoring performance against Dundalk in June "probably" would have been enough to get him promoted to the senior international squad regardless of his move.

Caulfield said: “I’m delighted for him. It’s great for him. I’ve always felt he’s a special boy and everything he gets, he deserves.

"Fair dues to him. Let’s hope he gets into the final squad.

“I don’t get wound up about when they get called in, whether it should have been three weeks ago or a month ago or now.

"The most important thing is he was called up. Everyone knows where he came from.

"Everybody knows what he’s done for the last 18 months and we have to take pride and honour in that.

"From our point of view, to think that he could leave us and a week later be starting in the opening game of the Championship, it shows that there are players who can do that.

"But at the same time, there aren’t a lot of players who can do that.

“While deep down everyone would have loved if he was called up and had Cork City after his name, the way I feel about it ultimately is that he’s been called in effectively being a Cork City player, because he’s only really played one game at Preston."

Caulfield is aware of the criticism of Ireland's management not taking a punt on players from the domestic game.

He believes it's a question of the SSE Airtricity League being properly promoted because perceptions can be damaging.

He said: "Martin and Roy have a difficult job and everyone has their opinions.

"As I keep saying, perception is the thing out there, in that the perception of our league isn’t the best.

"That’s what we have to keep working at. We have to keep promoting and that’s what I always try to do.”

“Maybe if we could go back and see could we bring in two or four players, like in the old days, who’d go in and train.

"Obviously Mark McNulty was in training with them when they were in Fota and there have been other players too.

“It would be good for guys if they could get called up but at the same time I suppose there are Irish lads in the Championship and probably League One in England — guys like Conor Hourihane, John Egan — who have been around for a while but only got called up recently.

"They’ve all been in the Championship and they were probably saying that they should get called up as well.

“It’s a hard call because there’s so many players outside the Premier League and it’s probably different for the manager because they’re not at the highest level, which is the Premier League, so it is difficult.

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“My thoughts might have been different 10 years ago but it got to the stage where we need to change the perception of our league.

"We have some quality players — not all, but some — and I just think that as a club, we should take great pride that he got called in this week".