TONY MOWBRAY has backed Bailey Wright to overcome his personal anguish in order to give everything he can to aid Australia’s attempts to make the World Cup quarter-finals.

Wright was a second-half substitute yesterday as Australia claimed a 1-0 win over Denmark to book their place in the knockout stages in Qatar and set up a last-16 meeting with Argentina.

In the aftermath of the game, the Sunderland centre-half revealed he had played despite receiving news prior to kick-off that his English-based mother-in-law was seriously ill. Sadly, she died a couple of hours after the final whistle.

Wright will be remaining in Qatar to try to help Australia make the World Cup quarter-finals for the first time in their history, and while he is yet to speak to the defender personally, Mowbray is confident he is a strong enough character to be able handle everything he is currently having to deal with.

“We haven’t spoken to him yet, but all the lads are aware of it, and all the coaching staff were talking about it this morning,” said Mowbray, who is without both Wright and Costa Rica forward Jewison Bennette because of their World Cup commitments. “We’ve seen the quotes.

“My own view is that he’s in a bubble there. He’s with his international team-mates and they’re going through an adventure. Bailey is a great guy, an amazing human being, and he’ll know that we’re all there supporting him. But I also think he’s a very focused guy.

“I was just watching on the TV, showing Australia training, and you can see Bailey right in the thick of it. Even when he’s not had much game time, I know what he’s like here. He’s still right at the heart of it, he’s still the loudest voice in the dressing room before the game when the team goes out, encouraging and demanding what we need to do.

“Life’s a journey for us all, and it’s really sad what’s happened with his mother-in-law, but we wish him well. From his perspective, hopefully we won’t be seeing him too soon, but they’ve got a tough fixture against Argentina, who looked pretty good the other night, so we’ll see.”

Wright will be in Qatar for at least another week, and Bennette will be hoping to join him in the knockout stages, with Costa Rica taking on Germany in their final group game this evening harbouring hopes of making it to the last 16 after their surprise win over Japan.

Mowbray has been keeping a close eye on both players’ performances, although he admits it is hard to say when they will be ready to resume their domestic duties with Sunderland, regardless of when their World Cup adventure ends.

Neither player has been a regular starter in Qatar, and while Sunderland’s coaching team expect to receive a detailed breakdown of their training programmes when they return to Wearside, they will have to be monitored closely on their return to gauge whether any top-up training sessions are required.

“I’m pretty sure we will get the full physical data reports from Australia and Costa Rica, outlining what they’ve done every day and what their output was,” said Mowbray. “Every day, professional footballers use GPS now. They get downloaded and I’m sure we’ll get a full report of how they performed, what sort of distances they covered and how many days they trained for.

“I’ll talk to them and see how they feel, and we’ll either put them straight back into our programme or we’ll put them into programme and top them up with some extra to get them back up to speed again.”