Young guns go for it

Around about the time that Andy Townsend moved to Birmingham, to link up with his former boss Brian Little, another new face appeared on the West Brom training pitch. The new man, an Icelandic defender, had been signed from Stoke for a small fee and the transfer hadn't attracted too much attention outside the club.

It took Kevin Kilbane a while to get talking to his new team mate, Larus Siggurdsson, but after a few pleasantries they struck common ground . . . they'd both played in the World Cup qualifier in Reykjavik two years previously.

"That got us going but, to be honest, I still didn't remember him. In the end the penny dropped when he said he played right back that day. I couldn't believe it," says Kilbane with a slightly bemused tone. "I wouldn't have recognised him at all, although I've just seen some pictures from the game this week and it's Larus all right, but I remembered what he did to me." "He gave me a good whacking that day but, to be honest, I can't blame Larus, he's a nice lad really, and I think that it was more a case of me not being able to handle it. I've developed since then, I'm stronger physically and mentally and I like to think that if someone had a few whacks now it wouldn't bother me too much. But at the time it was hard."

McCarthy's attempt to reassure him that his chance would come again didn't do much to comfort the 20-year-old who, already fed up with living in a hotel in the immediate aftermath of his move from Preston to Birmingham, felt that after years of watching the Irish team from afar he had blown his chance.

"I tried to put a brave face on it at the time but it definitely weighed on my mind. My club form dipped for a few months and I struggled to get it out of my head but eventually I realised that if I put my head down and started to improve then I would get a chance again." The following year he got the opportunity to put things right. After coming on in the second half of the game against the Czechs in Olomouc he made his mark.

A subdued display against Argentina followed but then came the game against Sweden when he set up both Irish goals.

His elevation from bit-part player in McCarthy's panel was completed in an outstanding performance against Yugoslavia and now, at 22 and with only eight caps to his credit, he has become a central figure in the Ireland manager's reckoning.

It might all have turned out very differently for the Preston born winger. In his late teens Kilbane was called-up for an English Youth squad session at Lilleshall and he shocked everyone at Deepdale when he announced that he didn't want to go.

Thanks to his parents, Longford born Theresa and Farrell from Achill Island, the youngster's sense of Irishness ran deep. His earliest memories included trips to Feis Ceoil to see his sister, Geraldine, compete in Irish dancing competitions.

Because of the family's social life most of his friends were, like him, the sons of working class Irish couples who had moved a couple of decades earlier to the north of England. For him, there was never any question of pulling on an England jersey.

"Sam Allardyce (Preston's manager at the time) was annoyed about it and I suppose I can understand that because he had done a lot to help me and he would have liked to see me get on which at that stage to him would have meant representing England.

"All my life, though, I'd been supporting Ireland. I still remember how special Ray Houghton's goal against England in Stuttgart was to me, watching it at home with my brother and my mam and the feeling I had at the time of how good a team we'd really become. All my friends were the same, in school there were the lads who supported Ireland and the ones who supported England . . . it all seemed completely natural.

"Anyway, my mam just told me to go down there and enjoy myself, so I went. My heart wasn't really in it but I didn't let on to anyone. They were looking to put together a squad for some matches, that were coming up, so I did the three days there and just came home again."

At club level England caps would have made him more marketable but then Kilbane maintains that his club career to date has been plotted very much with his ambition to play for Ireland in mind. Leaving Preston, a club he had effectively been involved with since he was 10-years-old was difficult, he says, but the fact that he would be playing first division football made regular international football a much more realistic target, and his only regret about the move now is the way that it was handled by his former manager Gary Peters.

"He was quoted at the time as saying that I'd been desperate to get away which hurt a lot. I'd spent 10 years at the club (Alan Kelly and Brian Mooney had been his heroes) and I still had a lot of friends who went along to see them every week.

"When he put the deal to me he was virtually saying that he wanted me to go, that the money (£1.25 million) was too good for them to turn down. After I talked it over with a few people it seemed too good a chance for me to turn down also, so I agreed to go. The way it looked was that if I was playing in the first division then Mick was more likely to be there looking at you play and the same goes for the premiership, if you are up there playing against the biggest and best clubs then it stands to reason that you're going to get noticed." His preferred route to the top, he insists, would be via promotion with West Brom but another transfer looks more likely. He had scarcely started to settle at the Hawthorns when there was talk of the bigger clubs being interested and recently repeated speculation of a £4 million move.

Like Preston before them, Brian Little's side's ambition is constantly limited by the size of the club's budget, and while persuading Lee Hughes to stay over the summer is considered to have been something of a coup, it's far from certain what might be on the table as the end of Kilbane's contract next summer.

Of more immediate concern to the player, however, is the club's current form. "It's a little frustrating," he says "because we've been way too erratic for a long time now. Last season we were scoring a lot of goals but we were letting in so many that we'd have to score three or four to win a game. Brian's changed things and we're probably a bit more solid now but then we're not scoring so many."

Kilbane himself, after a flying start to the season when he scored six goals in quick succession, while playing wide on the left of a three man attack, is adapting to his more low key role in Little's team as a wing back. A change he quite enjoys even if he doesn't sound all that convincing.

This week, all of that is on the back burner. After a week cooped-up in the team hotel with only telephone conversations with Laura, his wife back in Birmingham, and the occasional visit from his Dublin based relatives to distract him, he is looking forward to getting down to business. Tonight there is only one concern. He hasn't played in a game this important since the ill-fated outing in Iceland. This time is different. Kilbane has come a long, long way in the last two years and this time, he knows, he's ready.