LEAGUE OF IRELAND: Emmet Malonegets the views of St Patrick's Athletic manager Jeff Kenna ahead of Friday's league opener against former club Galway United and talks to Latvian midfielder Gints Freimanis.
HAVING set out to “trim the fat” over the course of the close season, St Patrick’s Athletic find themselves down to the bare bones ahead of Friday’s opening game of the new league campaign.
A mixture of injuries and suspensions threatens to deprive new manager Jeff Kenna of seven established players and with things having looked even worse last week, he and his assistant, Paul Peschisolido, were obliged to register themselves just in case.
By yesterday the crisis had eased to the extent that the threat of the pair having to don boots appeared to have receded but with the likes of Mark Quigley, Jason Gavin and Jamie Harris all set to sit Friday’s game out, the Dubliner is still having to hope that some of the club’s youth players and new signings might make an impact against his former club, Galway United.
“I’d prefer everyone to be fit and available and giving me a headache as to what the team would be,” said Kenna, who identified a challenge for the title and a cup as his targets for the season yesterday, “but that’s not the case and we just have to get on with it.
“Whoever goes out and plays, I’m expecting it to be a competitive game and for them to do the things we’ve been working on in pre-season. We’ve had a couple of young lads training with the first team – Stephan Fitzpatrick and Anthony Costigan – and I would think they’ll come into the squad rather than me sitting on the bench.”
Amongst the new signings potentially in line for a start are John Lester, Mark Leech, Gary Rogers and Latvian midfielder Gints Freimanis, a 23-year-old from Saldos who was a team mate of Mindaugas Kalonas when FK Riga played Bohemians in the Inter Toto cup last year.
The club went to the wall not long after and Freimanis’ career took the first of several strange twists when he travelled to Longford to stay with his brother, Maris, who had a building job in the town.
“Longford was good,” he says, “but it was a difficult time for me because the people in Riga who couldn’t pay me still wouldn’t let me sign for another club and so I missed the transfer window. I couldn’t register and so I was without a club.
“I went to Spain then and had a little time at Atletico Balarius who are in the third division before getting the chance to go to Real Betis.
I could have stayed with Atletico, they were a good club but when the chance comes to go to a club like Betis . . . The coach there liked me, I think, but the decision wasn’t his and I was told I was too old for their reserve team but,” he concludes without the slightest hint of rancour, “not the right standard for the first team.”
An Irish journalist suggested he return here and after Paul Doolin passed on the opportunity to sign the player for Cork City, Kenna decided the versatile midfielder, who can also play up front, could add something to the mix at Richmond Park.
“At Cork I wasn’t fully fit and the manager decided not to sign me, which is fine, such is football. I’m still not completely fit but here the manager has shown confidence in me, which is good,” he says. “Now, hopefully, I will play.”
It would make a welcome change after what seems like a lost year and Freimanis is hoping that with a run of games in the St Patrick’s side he can recover the sort of form that previously brought him within a whisker of international honours.
“Two years ago I was in the squad but didn’t play,” he says. “I hope now that I play well here and that the international manager comes to see me. I’d like very much to play for my country.”
Kenna sees his experience of European football as well as his ability to slot in pretty much anywhere in midfield or up front as significant assets and the new arrival began to underline his potential in last week’s friendly against Chelsea’s youths when he exerted a good deal of influence on the game while also managing to get a goal.
The more physical approach here has proven a problem for some other foreign players to play in the league down the years but Freimanis clearly relishes it, seeing his strength and, er, enthusiasm as an important part of his armoury.
“I’m not 100 per cent but I feel good and I’m looking forward to playing in Ireland. I like tackles,” he says with a broadening grin. “I like to kick somebody sometimes. I like the football here. I think it’s my game.”
