Arter never considered England

Harry Arter has scotched talk that he could leave the Republic of Ireland set-up in favour of playing for England.

The Bournemouth player has risen through the ranks of Ireland's underage teams and has three caps for the senior side although the fact that he has yet to feature in a competitive fixture means theoretically he could switch allegiances.

However, despite a wave of speculation around the time of last month's World Cup qualifiers against Georgia and Moldova that the midfielder was weighing up his options, Arter has quashed any suggestion that his commitment to Martin O'Neill's side was in doubt.

“I’m not too sure where it came from,” he told RTE Sport.

“I was in the cinema and I came out and had so many alerts on my phone from all different people, close friends and people that weren’t so close asking me what the situation was.

“I honestly looked at my phone thinking someone’s hacked my phone or someone’s been on it and put out a message that I don’t want to play for Ireland anymore.

“It was a strange sort of situation and one that I kind of laughed off in the end. It was one that I felt didn’t deserve me to come out and give some sort of answer to because it wasn’t something I created.

“For me it was a little bit silly and that’s why I chose to ignore it.

“I did take it as a compliment in the end because people were saying nice things.

“I think it was Paul Merson, that’s maybe where it could have come from and someone in the media put two and two together that I was pulled out of the squad and there was talk of England.”

Arter is set to finally make his competitive debut in Saturday's meeting with Austria in Vienna and he feels their opponents, despite recent struggles, are not to be taken lightly.

“Austria haven’t had the best of starts to the group so the pressure’s all going to be on them,” he said.

“We can go there with points on the board and good confidence from our last three games in the group.

“I think people underestimated Georgia quite a bit. There was a bit of negativity after that game but we picked up all three points and watched them play against Wales.

“On another day they could have beaten Wales, I watched that game and thought they were the better side.”

“Serbia away is another tough game, Austria found that out, so I think we’ve picked up some good results and definitely the pressure will be on them.”

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