By Tom Hughes

The weekend all football fans fear: a dreaded international break.

It’s one of those gruelling mid-season tasters of what life will be like in the football news vacuum also known as “the summer”.

But worse than that, this break feels like the football calendar has been designed by a coalition of particularly sadistic soap opera writers and tabloid sports journalists, with the season left dangling on a cliff-hanger.

Thankfully, this weekend was not as excruciating as it first appeared.

Rather than worrying about Good Friday’s clash with Birmingham, watching my fairly clueless League One and Two accumulators fail one by one or staring at the drivel on TV when Match of the Day should be starting, this time there was Palace related action going on.

From South Africa, Australia, the Democratic Republic of Congo to… Wycombe, representatives of the Eagles were all over the place.

The biggest headline grabber so far has undoubtedly been Wilfried Zaha’s incredible performance for the England U21s.

Dubbed the man of the match by the national press and smashing his first international goal, the youngster tricked and twirled his way through the Romanian defence.

A similarly proud moment for the club came when little Jonathan Williams got his first senior international cap for Wales.

Coming on against Scotland for some guy called Gareth Bale, the midfield minnow replicated Zaha by performing exactly as he does in red and blue.

Despite rejecting the chance to represent DR Congo in the African Cup of Nations, Yannick Bolasie debuted for the side against Libya and was another Palace star to give a good account of himself.

Weirdly, there was still no call up to the Spanish national squad for Palace’s defensive rock Peter Ramos, despite reported transfer interest by Real Madrid’s Jose Mourinho.

Perhaps that’s why they could only draw with Finland.

I’m glad this flurry of international activity is almost over and we can finally breathe easy again knowing there’s been no nasty injuries that will affect the Eagles’ season conclusion.

While fatigue is a worry – especially with the more long-distance absentees such as Jedinak who plays on Tuesday in Sydney – it’s pleasing to witness the steadily growing international reputations of the Palace squad.

Tom Hughes writes for the Five Year Plan

@thughes0197