Gareth McAuley: Playing for Northern Ireland benefits your club career

Huddersfield's Sean Scannell, QPR's Sean Goss and Partick Thistle's Niall Keown have all been identified as possible inclusions in Michael O'Neill's squad down the line, with Northern Ireland a bigger attraction given their recent success.

Defender McAuley has appealed to those considering whether to make themselves eligible for his nation by revealing how his own Northern Irish performances earned him a switch to Albion.

In 2011, Baggies boss Roy Hodgson was watching one of his former Fulham players Aaron Hughes during the international break but it was McAuley who caught his eye, and subsequently moved from Ipswich to The Hawthorns later that summer.

"There's a few other lads who have got paperwork submitted who want to come and play - that's great for the country going forward," McAuley told Press Association.

"We want to produce more players through the under-21s and the youth set up. The future's bright going forward. It's that feel-good factor that everyone now wants to be a part of.

"International football can only help out your club careers. You can come, play here and do well. Going right back to when I moved to West Brom, it was because of Roy Hodgson watching two international games.

"He was watching Hughesy, who he had worked with before, but that really got me into West Brom. It's helped me massively and it will help the other lads going forward."

McAuley's future at The Hawthorns is uncertain because the 38-year-old's contract is up at the end of this month.

The experienced centre-half completed 90 minutes in each of Northern Ireland's two games on their tour of Central America.

Though O'Neill's team lost both games, without scoring in either, the hope is the tour can be beneficial in the long run, as their 2014 South American trip was prior to their Euro 2016 qualification campaign.

"We've spent 10 days with each other, get to know each other," said McAuley. "From that perspective, it's good.

"All them things going forward are real positives from this trip because throughout the season in international football you don't get together a lot.

"Further down the line we're finding these games and tours in the summer beneficial."