Injury-plagued Scott Hogan lasted just 29 minutes of Aston Villa's Championship clash away to Reading tonight.

As reported by this morning's Irish Independent, Hogan will declare for Martin O'Neill's men following a face-to-face meeting with the Ireland manager.

The former Brentford striker moved to Villa in January but he has been plagued by injuries and this latest setback comes just over two weeks away from Ireland's crucial World Cup double-header against Georgia and Serbia - games he may well have a role to play in if the relevant paperwork is completed on time.

Hogan hobbled from the pitch after 29 minutes in Villa's clash with Reading.

Wouldn't you know it 29 minutes into tonight's game and Scott Hogan goes off injured. — eire.guide (@eireguide) August 15, 2017

Scott Hogan injured again, tbf if I had his "task" I'd throw a sicky aswell, poor bloke #AVFC — therowleyranger (@therowleyranger) August 15, 2017

Scott Hogan off injured after 29mins. A proper Irishman, then. — TheOpelJersey (@TheOpelJersey) August 15, 2017

"He's keen, he's very keen," said O'Neill yesterday, "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."

Online Editors