Fahey ready for the fresh challenges

NEWS: EMMET MALONE talks to the Birmingham City midfielder about life in the Championship and his new manager

NEWS: EMMET MALONEtalks to the Birmingham City midfielder about life in the Championship and his new manager

HAVING LAIN low in Mexico for the last few weeks, Keith Fahey dipped his toe back in the world of football yesterday out in Tallaght stadium where the concluding stages of a local schools tournament he was sponsoring brought a fairly special buzz to the place.

In the end, his old lot, St Maelruans didn’t fare so well but they were there, taking part, and that was something, he says, for in his day there wasn’t the option of playing soccer in the school and though he played a bit of Gaelic football for them over the years, his club career with Thomas Davis proved short lived after he was told off for scoring with his head in his first outing and decided not to go back.

The inaugural Keith Declan Fahey Cup (his full name is used to so as to incorporate the name of his father who died just short of two years ago) was won, as it turned out, in a penalty shoot-out by St Martin De Porres National School. It was a dramatic finale and things worked out better for the Aylesbury outfit than they did for Birmingham in an equally nail biting last day of the Premier League campaign. On Monday week, when pre-season training starts back at St Andrew’s, Fahey will have to start facing up to the consequences of the way things turned out that afternoon.

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A fair bit has changed since May, of course. For a start, Alex McLeish has gone; news Fahey first got wind of via a text message from his barber, Jeff Hoey, back in Tallaght, and Chris Hughton has taken over, a development the midfielder was slightly more on top of having made more effort to keep abreast of things in the wake of the text from Hoey.

Oddly, given the number of people who inhabit what might be described as the upper echelons of Irish football, the 28-year-old has yet to meet his new boss. He arrived on the international scene after Hughton had departed and their paths have somehow never crossed in England.

“I think he’s a good appointment from his record at Newcastle,” he says however. “I’ve heard he is a very good coach as well as a good man manager. People have said I’ll enjoy working with him.

”At Newcastle, they did well when he was there even in the Premier League when he got sacked. I heard he likes to get the ball down and play attacking football which is good and I’m looking forward to getting back into it.”

Though he is clearly disappointed, returning to the Championship, he says, is not a major issue for him. He did well there before and can, he thinks, do better now that he has a couple of years playing at the higher level under his belt. How the club gets on depends, he admits, on how many of the current squad they can hang on to.

“I haven’t spoken to anyone.” he says, “not even any of the lads who might be going. We’ll just wait and see who is there on Monday week when we get in and who might not be there.” But can they come straight back up? “I think we could; if we hold onto the players.”

Fahey himself clearly hopes the team can hit the ground running, not least because it should help him to maintain his challenge for a regular place in the Ireland team. Giovanni Trapattoni has certainly placed increasing amounts of faith in him after what was a fairly tentative introduction to the side and the Italian cannot have been disappointed with the return on his investment.

The Dubliner acknowledges that it will not be easy to dislodge the likes of Glenn Whelan or Keith Andrews in central midfield but hopes he can continue making his case at every opportunity. Regardless of who is in the team, he reckons, Ireland have a “great chance” of qualifying for the European Championships this autumn he insists.

In the meantime, he points out, he has must wait to see how central he is to Hughton’s plans. The hope is that when Hoey gets around to bringing the former St Patrick’s player the new manager’s intention, the news will be good.