A GLANCE AT today’s fixtures for the first Saturday of the new Championship season will pique some curiosity.
You can well imagine Jayson Molumby absolutely wrecking poor Sammy Szmodics’ head when West Bromwich Albion – now without Dara O’Shea after he joined Burnley – face Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park.
Another Ireland duo set to be in direct battle will be Preston North End captain Alan Browne and new Bristol City signing Jason Knight, although given the versatility of both players would it be any surprise if they actually ended up on the opposite side of the pitch to each other in respective right back/wing slots?
Newly-promoted Plymouth Argyle have once again agreed a season-long loan deal with Aston Villa for Finn Azaz, the emerging Ireland U21 star who played a key role in their promotion from League One as champions with 101 points.
His progression is worth keeping an eye on.
“He scored some big goals and provided some assists at important times last season,” Plymouth boss Steven Schumacher said. “His creativity and quick thinking will benefit us greatly in the Championship.”
But it is the visit of Hull City, who now have Shelbourne as part of owner Acun Ilical’s vision for a multi-club model, to Norwich that really delivers a contrast of Irish fortunes. No wonder, then, that international manager Stephen Kenny will be in attendance at Carrow Road.
Just this week both clubs elongated the plot lines further; Hull confirming the permanent signing of Aaron Connolly from Brighton and Hove Albion while the Canaries announced that Emmanuel Adegboyega had joined from Drogheda United.
Those two deals alone illustrate how the Championship is home to a wildly contrasting habitat, an ecosystem which houses the delicate hopes of those looking to make their name in the game as well as the ones attempting to revitalise their reputation.
It’s a jungle out there and the laws can differ significantly.
Connolly is an Ireland international who has scored in the Premier League and already been labelled as the Great Hope. His ambitions now are not to reaffirm his place within the senior ranks, having returned to the 21s under Jim Crawford while still eligible, but to simply stay fit and become a fixture in Liam Rosenior’s side.
“He wants to be here and show his true worth. I can’t wait to get him fit and for him to fulfil his potential with us. Aaron represents everything I want on the pitch from my team: energy, pace, aggression and quality,” Rosenior, who worked with him as a youngster at Brighton, said this week.
Welcome to Norwich City, Emmanuel Adegboyega 🇮🇪
— Norwich City FC (@NorwichCityFC) August 3, 2023
The defender joins us from Drogheda United and will form part of our development and academy setup 🤝
Interestingly, Connolly has put pen to paper on a one-year permanent contract rather make do with another loan. Given he had one more season to run on the four-year deal that came his way when his stock was at its highest back in the summer of 2020, this move feels like the fork in the road for a 23-year-old who has already journeyed diverging paths.
Adegboyega, on the other hand, is 19-years-old and seen as one for the future by Norwich after impressing during his 24 games for Kevin Dohery’s Drogheda this season.
“In the space of five or six months, looking at where I’m heading, it’s drastic, it’s life changing to be honest,” the defender admitted.
His emergence also shows how a gamble can pay off given Dundalk wanted him to remain at Oriel Park and be part of their first-team squad having broken in towards the end of the 2022 campaign. Instead he went to Drogheda, was able to establish himself as a starter and caught the eye.
Sean McLoughlin, the left-sided centre half likely to start for Hull today, might well appreciate Adegboyega’s route given he is now embarking on his third Championship season as an established figure and is also a League of Ireland graduate.
The former Cork City defender arrived in England in 2019 when he was 22. Kenny had him on standby for the most recent Ireland squad so he will have another chance to impress in the flesh. The 26-year-old signed a new contract this year and has already beaten the odds, refusing to be swallowed up and spat out by the churn of an unforgiving industry.
He has persevered and continues to strive, the type of character which his young teammate, recent Ireland U21 call-up Harry Vaughan, looks to as an example. The English-born playmaker has a new three-year deal of his own and will have the chance to show he’s capable of adapting to increased expectations.
Connolly, meanwhile, will see a trio of familiar faces on the opposing side – two of whom are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of career-experience but who have still been through enough challenging times to test whether they really do want to persevere.
Shane Duffy, 32 in January, was a teammate of Connolly at Brighton as well as Ireland.
His time on England’s south coast came to an end in the winter transfer window when he made a loan move to Fulham permanent, although he remained a peripheral figure for Marco Silva’s side.
Duffy had been on borrowed time at Brighton since that difficult loan move to Celtic during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, a period when he was also coming to terms with the death of his father.
Norwich offers him the chance to establish himself once again, the door to Ireland very much ajar given his force of personality. Defensive colleague – for now, at least – Andrew Omobamidele has been the subject of interest over the summer from last season’s beaten Champions League semi-finalists AC Milan but the club have not buckled to sell below a fee they deem respectable.
In this instance it’s in the region of €25 million for a 21-year-old academy product who arrived from Leixlip United in the Dublin District Schoolboys League. One upshot of being a yo-yo club between the top flight and second tier is that Norwich have a manageable wage structure and aren’t at risk of requiring a fire-sale whenever the inevitable occurs.
It’s another law of this jungle that looks to keep Omobamidele grounded at a time he could be primed to reach a new height – so long as the price is right, of course.
For striker Adam Idah, who scored his first senior Ireland goal against Gibraltar in June, this Championship season has arrived with a serious show of faith.
A new long-term contract has been signed and the only forward to arrive following the departure of Teemu Pukki has been veteran Ashley Barnes on a free transfer from Burnley. Idah, who only turned 22 in February, possesses the raw materials needed to become a striker of considerable calibre.
Injuries and the natural struggle to find form as a result have hampered his early progress in smoothing out some of the rough edges to become a more polished operator.
It’s an unforgiving world with some of the many strands of the game’s story told in an unglamorous Championship fixture.
