AS A FOOTBALLER born and raised in Dublin, the lure of Celtic was impossible to turn down for Jonny Hayes.
After his performances for Aberdeen earned him a nomination for Scottish Premiership Player of the Year last season, the 30-year-old winger was offered the chance to sign for the Glasgow giants this summer.
A month into the new campaign, five of his eight appearances for Brendan Rodgers’ side have come off the bench, and Hayes is well aware of how difficult a task it will be to nail down a regular starting berth in a side that went unbeaten in domestic competitions in 2016/17.
“Obviously it was a bit of a step up,” he said after Ireland’s training session at the FAI’s National Training Centre today. “Everyone knows how big Celtic are back in Ireland and I had plenty of people on to me when it came about just after the Scottish Cup final and just before we met up with the squad in the summer.
There was a bit of back and forth for a couple of days and then I got my head around the fact that I was leaving Aberdeen and it was a chance to link up with the manager at Celtic. That plus the chance to join a big club was probably too hard to turn down.”
He added: “I knew it was going to be difficult with the season that the team had last year. It was never going to be a case of me signing and playing straight away.
“There were a couple of lads who had very good years in front of me in the pecking order and I knew where I stood when I signed. I played a couple of games and picked up an illness at the wrong time, then missed out on a couple of squads.
“I’ve been happy enough with how it’s going and my goal is to try and play in the team. Everyone wants to play, whatever level you’re at and I knew what I was getting into before I signed.”
Reports yesterday claimed that Cardiff City have told Celtic they would be keen to take the wide man on loan for the season, but Hayes says he knows nothing about the speculation.
“No, not that I know of, anyway,” he replied, when asked about the possibility of leaving. “To be honest with you, you just see these sort of things on social media crop up now and again, but nothing that I know of anyway.
“It was actually one of my pals sent me a screenshot of something or other and he said, ‘Any truth in that?’. As far as I’m aware, there’s none, so I’m not exactly sure where it came from.”
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