Richard Garcia has been called into the Australia national squad, the unattractively-named Socceroos, for a game against South Africa tonight at QPR's ground in west London.
I suppose it shows how far both Garcia and Hull City have come, but frankly, he's as good now as he was throughout an excellent season last year when he had to deal with initially indifferent form and then a bereavement which led to a gruelling round-the-world mercy trip which none of us would ever wish to go through.
So why didn't the Aussies call him up last year? It would appear, even in a country as renowned for its classlessness as Australia, that their coach Pim Verbeek (I love that name - imagine being Mr and Mrs Verbeek anxiously debating what to call their newborn son) has exercised a spot of snobbery and decided that now Garcia has contributed to a promotion campaign and played a single Premier League match, that he is good enough for his team.
This happened last season, albeit to a lesser extent. Damien Delaney played for us for six years and was, for almost all of the time, an excellent and reliable performer in defence (except when Phil Parkinson madly believed he could turn him into a left-winger) but he was never brought into the Republic of Ireland squad. The moment he joined QPR in January, a club in the same division as us (though lower) but perceived as 'bigger', he got his call-up.
City haven't had an Aussie international before. Danny Allsopp's two caps came long after he'd left us and gone back home, whereas I don't know if Jason van Blerk had an international string to his very left-footed bow, but given that we were in the bottom division under Brian Little when he played for us I suspect that any caps which came his way were during the more elevated spells of his career.
I suppose we should be grateful, then. Garcia will probably play tonight but at least he's not flying back to Australia for it, which he will have to do if he maintains his profile with Verbeek and receives call-ups for the World Cup qualifiers. It's come to the stage where Aussie and South African footballers are now all based in Europe so their friendly internationals need to be played on our continent too.
I'm a little nervous about Garcia picking up an injury, but I suspect Phil Brown is more so. Throughout last season we were fortunate that only Sam Ricketts was regularly beetling off for international duty and always came back unscathed. We have to face Blackburn away this weekend, and with Craig Fagan the main understudy for the right midfield spot, I think we're all praying for Garcia's unblemished return to the fold more than ever.
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