Kennedy career in bloom again

Mark Kennedy was yesterday reflecting on the difference a year can make, as he waited for the news that he's on his way back into the Republic of Ireland team tomorrow evening.

Twelve months ago, the player who once fitted the description of Britain's most expensive teenager, found himself locked into a crisis of self doubt after terminating a steadily worsening partnership with Liverpool.

After a loan spell at QPR, life at Wimbledon proved not a whole lot better. There, in competition with Michael Hughes for the job of running the left wing, he discovered that Joe Kinnear was not prepared to offer him the regular first team status that attracted him to the club in the first instance.

Now, the tribulations of Liverpool and Wimbledon are a thing of the past. Regular first team football, albeit at a lower level with Manchester City, has given him back much of his old confidence. And at international level, the career which flowered and withered in the closing months of the Jack Charlton era, is in bloom again.

Kennedy's stature has grown to the point where his impending return, after being rested for the game in Croatia, is now seen as a likely rallying point in Malta tomorrow evening. And he is not slow to take the point.

"It's a huge turn around for me - and who am I to complain," he said. In this business, the line between success and failure can be very thin. I've always believed that with luck, I could do a big job for Ireland but it wasn't until the game against Sweden in April, that it really started to happen for me again.

"I was lucky enough to get a goal which registered with the crowd and from that moment, I was on the move again. On my return to Wimbledon, I went back into the first team and that, in turn, provided me with a shop window and the chance of joining a big club like Manchester City. "It helped, too, of course that Mick McCarthy put me back in his team. International football is were it all happens." The ability to hit expansive goals first surfaced in his Millwall days. And Mick McCarthy has no problem recalling a celebrated night at Highbury when his young protege fired one in from 30 yards in an FA Cup tie against Arsenal.

His sweetly struck shot, to seal a 2-0 success over Sweden, was of only marginally inferior quality. And yet neither quite compared with the superb strike which ensured that Ireland extracted all three points from last Wednesday's meeting with Yugoslavia.

Thanks to that spectacular effort, Kennedy is now seen as the man whose ability to strike from long range, can undo a Maltese defence which, as ever, will be built on the premise of strength in numbers.