Steven Davis deserves to sit at the top table of NI sporting legends

The esteem in which Steven Davis, who last night became Northern Ireland’s most capped footballer, is held came in a video clip broadcast by Sky Sports yesterday.

Sky interviewed former team-mates and managers of the Glasgow Rangers midfielder and the plaudits came from some of the leading names in world football.

Virgil Van Dijk, widely acknowledged as the world’s best defender, waxed lyrical about how much he relished playing alongside Davis when they were both at Premier League Southampton.

Then it was the turn of two of the world’s best known football managers. Ronald Koeman, who recently took over as manager of Barcelona and was in charge of Davis for two years on the south coast of England, delivered a gushing endorsement of the Cullybackey man, while another former Southampton manager, Mauricio Pochettino, even ranked Davis alongside two Barcelona legends, Xavi and Andreas Iniesta.

After reaching 120 caps in last night’s European Championship play-off against Bosnia, Davis surpassed the record held by Pat Jennings, another of the famous names interviewed by Sky Sports.

Northern Ireland has an uncanny knack for producing sporting superstars. The late George Best and Alex Higgins, golf’s Rory McIlroy, Jennings himself was regarded as one of the finest goalkeepers of his era.

Davis might not be considered alongside that distinguished list for sheer talent, but there are many reasons why he deserves to be sitting at the same table as those world-famous names, not least his role in the qualification for Euro 2016 after a barren period of qualifying for major tournaments that stretched back to 1986. He and former manager Michael O’Neill were arguably the two most important figures in Northern Ireland football’s resurgence in the last decade. Davis is truly an all-time great.