OK, Here is the update.
It turns out that the i210 can run with or without an external flash that contains suplimentary firmware for the intel device. Our board designer determined that the extra features were probably not worth having the external flash for the i210.
What then happens is that the i210 boots up with a PCI device ID of 1531 where as the more common device ID is 1533 when this flash with firmware is populated.
Looking at the PCI device id table in the IGB kernel module I see it does not support device ID of 1531. Thus Linux effectively does not have support for the dumbed down i210.
The solution is to re-spin the board with the flash accompanying the i210.
Thank you for all your support. Hopefully this forum post will help those in the future (i.e. DEVICE ID of 1531 vs 1533)