Kennedy keen to put his many talents on display

As the lives of men in his profession go, Mark Kennedy's involves precious little football just now. Sure, he turns up a few mornings a week to knock the ball around with the lads from the first team squad at Liverpool but, he knows he is a bit of an outsider with them these days. Come Saturday almost any one of them might get the nod from Roy Evans. Not him. He's probably played his last game for the team he supported as a child and now, he knows, it's simply time to move on.

Still, things could be worse for the Dubliner. The five games he has started since the summer might have been three had it not been for Mick McCarthy and the Ireland team. If the Republic's boss had remained true to his word that only first team players at club level would figure in his selections, Kennedy could have been completely forgotten about, for the other three games have been in the Pontins league, an unglamorous setting that has been the backdrop for the bulk of his Anfield career.

As it is he could hardly ask for a better shop window than a play-off for a place in the World Cup Finals and he knows it. "It would certainly be great to get the chance to do well on Wednesday, but the current situation does make things a bit different for me," he says.

"It's not really in my head at the moment but I know when I go back to Liverpool in a few days I'm going to have to start seeing about the move again. Now, whether I like it or not, there's pressure on me to do well because I don't know how many people might be looking in on this game to see how I do." The reserve games, what few there have been, are, he says, the same, with the young Irishman admitting to feeling the need to impress. The dream move to Anfield has become a nightmare and the sooner he gets to put it behind him, he feels, the better for all concerned.

"I've given up on the club, I've shown them what I'm capable of over two years and they are not interested, so at least I don't feel that I have to go into training every day breaking my neck to impress anyone there any more.

"In the games I have played over the last couple of months, I've played well but I haven't got the move yet so I have to keep working away. The gaffer has told me that with a bit of luck something can be sorted out over the next couple of weeks."

Middlesbrough and Nottingham Forest have shown most interest in signing the player and Kennedy would be enthusiastic about a move to either but the most important thing now is the move, rather than the destination.

"I think I'm good enough for Liverpool and if I'm good enough for them then I must be good enough for the Premiership so if I drop down a division it has to be to a club that can come straight back up.

"The main thing is to play regularly, though, I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've played for Liverpool since I've gone there and I want to play and so that's why I want to see how things can work out for me somewhere else."

Whether the former Millwall player will get to start on Wednesday remains to be seen but so far, McCarthy has certainly been loyal to the player he helped to bring on at the London club, while the youngster's versatility has thus far made him an easy man to pick.

"I really don't mind where I play. I like playing up front, I like playing behind the front two, I like playing wide on the left and I'd love to play in midfield, in the centre where I've played for the Liverpool reserves and got good reports from reserve manager Sammy Lee." He does, then, provide the Irish boss with some welcome options and this should stand to him but he could also be considered to be a little erratic, particularly after his recent sending off in Iceland, an incident which, he concedes, didn't do much to advance his cause.

"I have a tendency to lose the head a bit on the pitch. In England you can get away with it because if you start having a go at a referee they'll generally just have a go back but in internationals it's different and that was a mistake.

"I've made mistakes before, though, away from the pitch as well as on them and I like to think I don't make the same one twice. I'd like to think that won't happen again, that I won't get sent off. When Mick took me aside before the Romania game and said `we all like to mess around a bit and have a bit of a laugh when we get the chance, but today I need a man's performance from you out there' I think that's what I gave him. I thought I did exactly what he asked me to and now I just have to hope that he thought so too."

The rewards, if McCarthy was pleased - and he argued after the game that Kennedy rather than Gheorghie Hagi should have had the man-of-the-match award, could be considerable. Aside from a couple of chances to impress potential employers, there is the knowledge that, if Ireland progress to France '98, the players that bring them there will be hard to dislodge from the team.

This sort of thinking, however, is to get carried away with things, as far as Kennedy is concerned. The idea of playing in the World Cup finals has not "really hit me yet. I don't think it would even if I was there," he says, adding that "it always seems to be that it's only afterwards that you look back at something and think, `yeah, that was unbelievable'."

That, he hopes, is how he'll come to reflect on Wednesday night. His sixth start of the season, a chance to repay the faith shown in him by McCarthy and, of course, a turning point in a club career that continues to promise so much.