CIARÁN KILDUFF HAS made a career out of taking chances, which left him well-placed to assess the potential profit and loss of joining Shelbourne last winter.
But having returned from a year-and-a-half spell in the United States with Jacksonville Armada, in which time he became captain, his club selection criteria had to change. At 30, to be 31 later in the year, “you’re one injury away from the scrapheap”.
He left America believing that his term there was over and so he had time to gauge priorities that continue to alter.
Like many of the League of Ireland’s UCD alumni, Kilduff spent the early years of his career building towards life after football, before switching focus back to immediate matters.
He has an Arts degree to his name from Maynooth University and has begun to put it to some use, substitute teaching during the day and playing football by night. It’s a schedule that he dipped his toe into while at Dundalk, but now he’s fully committed.
Indeed, it was something the Shels proposition could offer above all others. There were options in America and some from Ireland’s top-flight, but the Drumcondra outfit’s lure proved the greatest on a number of fronts.
“Obviously, when you’ve a family and bills to pay, you’re looking at it financially and at what the best situation could be,” Kilduff tells The42.
The Shelbourne move is the right move for me at this moment in time, combining a bit of work with playing football.
“It allows me to live at home in Kilcock and to play in the League of Ireland, and I really think this is an opportunity for me more than anything to be a part of something.
“I remember coming into the league when Shelbourne were a really top team and at Tolka Park, they were demanding huge crowds.
“They are a club steeped in history and they probably feel that they deserve more. They’ve had a few years of hardship now and they’re due a bit of success.
“I, for one, believe that’s what’s needed at the club and of all the clubs that I’ve been at, people start supporting winning teams. You can see that at Dundalk and the transformation they’ve had in the last decade.
“Cork City, I had a stint there in 2013 and there were very few people at the games, then in 2017 they were nearly selling out Turner’s Cross every home game.
“Shels are looking to do something similar as a club and I think they’re trying to do things right, trying to live within their means in the process of trying to get promoted.
I don’t think it’d be a lie to say that the plan is to get promoted, whether it’s this year or next.”
That yearning for an upgrade to the top-flight seems to be in a two-fold form. While, of course, wanting to prove the board’s investment in the playing staff was worthwhile, there is a desire to get back playing Premier Division football. And, then there is the supporter aspect, too.
As recently as 2011, Shels were in the FAI Cup final and through speaking with Conan Byrne, his former team-mate at St Patrick’s Athletic, there is a sense that Kilduff craves the full Tolka Park experience. Packed crowds, raucous atmospheres, celebratory occasions.
Nonetheless, the pressure remains the same. This is a project, he insists, not a reckless flutter, and it may take time, given the newness of their panel and manager. So for Kilduff, it’s a case of teaching by day and learning at night.
“I think there was a game in pre-season where I’d never played with anyone else on the field,” he says, “and there are a lot of players who could have said the same thing that night. People have to realise that.
We’re still a work in progress and it’ll probably take us another while before we’re firing on all cylinders. We’ve got young players with good reputations, we’ve got senior players and we’re trying to get a blend and put it all together.
“I won a First Division at UCD and we would have been huge outsiders to win it — the likes of Shelbourne, Waterford and Sporting Fingal were in it. We won it from left field and it’s no different this season, anyone in the division can beat anyone else. No team is far superior to any other team.”
New manager Ian Morris has also caught the striker’s eye. Kilduff knew him from their spell together at St Pat’s, but familiarity has only developed since joining forces at Shels.
It’s tough for the 32-year-old, he concedes, having to learn and develop while on the job. Yet he compares the situation to that of Vinny Perth at Dundalk — where he’ll be judged on the titles accrued — and insists the dressing room emotion is positivity.
Although optimism is a character trait of Kilduff, the typical striker’s sense of knowing where to be at the right time providing solace.
The Jacksonville experience was great with the leisurely lifestyle incorporating “the weather, the beach and the training”, but it didn’t displace the comfort of his native Kilcock, where he’s returned to with his fiancée and daughter, surrounded by family and friends.
It’s a case of back where he belongs off the pitch and, provided this season goes to plan, his aim is for a swift return to where he feels affiliation on it, the place where he spent 10 seasons, the Premier Division.
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