February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Then he asked us the whereabouts of a guy who he had once reckoned was on his way to becoming one of the most prolific goal scorers his outfit would ever produce.
I didn’t know where the guy had ended up. All I knew is that the footballer in question is approaching his mid-20s now and no longer playing at a serious level. So, this official informs me that a few years back this kid was the talk of the club because of an incredible scoring record with the youths’ team. It’s a big jump from that level to senior but when a guy earns a reputation for being deadly around the box, the management are usually willing to give him a chance to prove he can bridge the gap.
Why exactly they did send the top scorer from their youths team home to Ireland without offering him a second pro contract when his first expired? The answer was a familiar old story. At the time, he was living in digs near the club’s ground, and any time somebody from the offices went into the pub down the street, this lad was in there supping pints. Worse again was the fact that unlike his fellow apprentices who’d scarper at the first sight of somebody from the club catching them having a sly beer, he’d stay there and make jolly with the hierarchy.
Perhaps somebody in officialdom spoke to him about calming down on the booze. Maybe they didn’t. The point of the story is: too many of the kids who come back from England moaning that they didn’t get the opportunity they deserved are themselves guilty of not taking the chance they were given. With the endorsements of friends and family ringing in their ears, they think they’ve made it when they step on the plane. In reality, getting snapped up by a club is a lot easier than getting kept on by them.
What’s ironic is that a few hours after hearing this depressing yarn, Robbie Keane was stretchered off against Rangers.
“You go through preseason to get your fitness up and get ready for the start then something like this happens,” said Keane. “It sets you back a bit, but I will keep myself ticking over. I’m usually a quick healer so hopefully I will be back sooner than we expect.”
Hopefully, indeed, because the paucity of striking options available to Brian Kerr makes the potential absence of Keane from the first two World Cup qualifiers in September a grievous blow. This is why Ireland, of all countries, can ill-afford prospective goal machines to be drinking their careers away at Premiership clubs. Not when Clinton Morrison, Alan Lee and David Connolly are the only other strikers in the squad.
Well, that’s not counting Jason Byrne, Glenn Crowe or whoever happens to be the token Eircom League invitee that week – what price Neale Fenn to make the cut for forthcoming Bulgaria friendly?
“I spoke to the assistant-manager with the Republic of Ireland, Chris Hughton, and he said there were a few things he thought I should work at,” Morrison told he Birmingham Evening Mail last week. “After training he’d pull me to one side and we’d practice finishing for about half an hour, just me and him, so he’s helped me a lot there. He also said to me that I’m quite a tall chap so I should be winning a few headers, I should be putting my head in there on crosses better than I had been. I’ve made a big effort to improve those aspects.”
It will take all those efforts and more for Morrison to wangle some serious playing time at Birmingham City between now and the forthcoming games against Cyprus and Switzerland. He’s scored a few goals in pre-season yet is still considered a long-shot for a starting spot at St. Andrews where Steve Bruce reportedly views Emile Heskey and Mikael Forssell as his preferred striking pair.
Connolly, of course, will probably score regularly enough for Leicester City because he is, after all, this generation’s David Kelly and the division just below the top flight (do we have to call it the Coca-Cola Championship?) is a level he has made his own. How prolific or not he is down there doesn’t really matter hugely to Ireland as the hallmark of his career has been the inability to bring his club form with him on international duty.
Alan Lee is a far more interesting case. A slow-burner whose height offers an alternative coming off the bench, the 25-year-old acquitted himself well against Nigeria and Jamaica in the Unity Cup at the end of last season. Of course, the inauspicious circumstances of those games make it difficult to assess how ready he is for the biggest stage. An injury sustained at an Ireland training seriously truncated his first season with Cardiff and right now, he’s facing into a tough situation because the club have four strikers of relatively equal merit available.
After that, you are down to discussing unproven kids, the pick of whom is Celtic’s Aiden McGeady. Apart from the prevailing wisdom being that his best position may be playing in the hole behind a front two, the opening clashes of a World Cup qualifying campaign are no place to blood a kid. Which leaves us no option but to pray for Keane’s speedy recovery.
As for our friend, the wayward striker who drank his way out of a potential Premiership career? Following some research, we have established he is working in a factory. And no doubt regaling all around him with tales of what might have been.