IT MAY NOT be the Premier League stardom he once dreamed of, but as his second season in the League of Ireland approaches its climax, Sean Kavanagh sounds happy.
The 25-year-old is set to be part of the Shamrock Rovers side that faces Dundalk on Sunday in the FAI Cup final.
“I can see the stadium from me ma’s. It’s only down the road. I think that’s why they brought me here — I’m local,” he says, during a pre-cup final media day at the Aviva Stadium.
The fact that the ex-Ireland U21 international is lining out in his own backyard will ensure Sunday is an emotional afternoon for the Irishtown native and his family.
“Growing up, seeing the stadium here, and coming to the old Lansdowne, it’s huge,” he adds.
Indeed, it has not long since Kavanagh was going to see his first game at the stadium as a fan.
“I would have been brought by my grandda, or me da,” he recalls. “I can’t tell you the exact game, but I would been to a good few. It would have been an Ireland game.”
Kavanagh will therefore be hoping he can produce a performance worthy of the occasion, as will many of his Rovers-supporting friends.
“They’d be die-hard Rovers, season-ticket holders all their lives.
“I’d be very aware of the history of the club. They’d be onto me about it, especially about the cup, because it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? One of my good friends, a Rovers fan, has already been onto me saying he’s nervous about Sunday.”
And are these friends brutally honest when it comes to assessing Kavanagh’s individual performances?
Yeah, say we’ve got a couple of days and you might meet them for a drink or something to eat and they’ll say, ‘Jeez, you were poor last week’. What can you say back? [laughs].
“Even if you think you’ve had a good game, they’ll tell you you were poor as well, so there’s no winning with them.”
And not only will Kavanagh have good friends in the crowd on Sunday, he will also come up against them on the pitch. Dundalk duo Sean Gannon and Daniel Kelly grew up similarly close to the Aviva and the Rovers star knows both individuals very well.
“I live across the road from Sean and I know Dano, as I hang around with his older brother. I’ve known Dano since he was a baby.
The three of us could be on the same side [of the pitch]. The whole of Ringsend will be swapping at half-time, going from right to left, trying to give us a bit of stick. It’s nice for the area for three local lads to be playing in the stadium, so I’m sure you’ll be getting loads from the area coming to watch.”
On his friendship with Kelly’s older brother, Kavanagh adds: “Any event with our friends, he’ll be there, and we’re in a WhatsApp group and that. He’s giving me a bit of stick. His name is Dean. He was at CY and has gone to Mochtas now, and I’m good mates with him.
[Dano and Dean] both are [very fast], they could catch pigeons.”
Meanwhile, in terms of his own game, Kavanagh is satisfied with both his individual performances and the team as a whole, with a second-place finish in the league and a cup final appearance a distinct improvement on previous years.
For the player himself, it has been an especially positive season, with the Dubliner recently named in the PFAI Team of the Year. Kavanagh has consequently come a long way from the 17-year-old who left Belvedere to join Martin Jol’s Fulham, after impressing on trial at the London club.
“I thought [Jol] was alright to be fair. I was over there a couple of months and he had me in training with the first-team.
“I probably didn’t do myself any justice, as I was nervous. I came from playing with Belvo a couple of times of week to full-time training and you had the likes of internationals there like Duffer [Damien Duff]. I maybe went into a shell, but he was good to me, and spoke to me, and gave me pointers on my game.”
Kavanagh initially made good progress at the English club, appearing 19 times in the Championship during the 2014-15 campaign. Thereafter though, the opportunities to play in the first team dissipated.
I wouldn’t look back at it, that’s football I suppose. A new manager could come into any team and the writing is on the wall for one or two players. Kit Symons played me, I had him in the U23s. I played a lot under him.
“Slaviša Jokanović, the Serb who used to be at Watford [took over].
“I don’t know, for whatever reason, I didn’t fit in his plans and he seen the club going another way. I couldn’t put my finger on it, to be honest.”
Subsequent loan spells at Mansfield and Hartlepool didn’t amount to much and ahead of the 2018 League of Ireland season, the out-of-favour youngster opted to come home. He would almost certainly have signed for Derry City were it not for the intervention of his old Fulham colleague, Duff, who was working as a youth coach with Shamrock Rovers at the time.
“I was originally supposed to go to Derry. Duffer rang me and asked: would I be interested in speaking to the manager here. I was a Dublin lad and it worked out that the gaffer wanted to sign me.
“Otherwise, it would have been Derry. I was up there with Kenny Shiels, he was the only one who showed an interest in signing me. So I came to Rovers.”
On Duff, Kavanagh adds: “He was in the Fulham first team when I went over at 17 and he sort of, you know how it is when you’re Irish? It doesn’t matter if you’re in the first team or U18s, we look after each other, and he sort of took me under his wing.”
So, as fate would have it, Kavanagh is now preparing for one of the biggest games of his career. On Sunday, he could be part of the first Rovers team to win the FAI Cup since 1987 — seven years before he was even born.
“Supporters have been supporting the club probably their whole lives and they’ve seen the 32 years go by. For me, I’m only with Rovers a couple of years, and I probably don’t feel that as much as the fans. But I speak to a lot of fans, and they always say they’d love to win the cup. And I’d love to be a part of the team that does it for them.”
On the latest episode of The42 Rugby Weekly, Eoin Toolan and Murray Kinsella provide their insight into how England took apart the All Blacks, and examine the challenge facing Rassie’s ‘Boks
