The ballad of Reading’s Gael
WHEN Stephen Hunt recently described Shane Long as a “Tipperary hurler”, he was paying the highest kind of compliment to the combination of steel and style with which the Reading striker had just forged his strongest run of form yet in the green shirt of Ireland.
But Hunt, a former colleague of Long’s at Reading, was also only speaking the plain truth. For Shane Long is the guy who could have been an All-Ireland medal winner with Tipp but who chose instead, at a critical point in his young life and sporting development, to walk away from a promising hurling career and try his luck at football instead.
“There was no Gaelic football or soccer around where I come from when I was a kid,” he says, matter-of-factly of his childhood in Gortnahoe (or, rather, as he says it, Gortnahoo. “You’ve got to pronounce it the right way,” he grins). “Up to the age of 10, it was just all hurling and it was the same really all over the county. I asked my mum there a few weeks ago: was I always hurling? And she said I had a hurley in my hand when I was three or four.”
Kitted out in his tracksuit after midweek training and sipping a bottled water, Long settles into his seat in the hotel adjacent to Reading’s Madejski Stadium and reflects on another sporting life, one which he may have left behind but which is still never too far away. “If you’re from Tipperary, hurling is in your blood,” he says.
Long was good enough to play with the Tipp minors for two years, enduring a brace of defeats in All-Ireland semi-finals at Croke Park and experiencing one victory and one defeat in Munster finals. The loss came against Cork — and the exceptional manner of it still hurts.
“We were winning by about 10 points and they beat us in the end,” he grimaces. “They got the ball about 45 yards out and this guy must have thought they were two points down because he went for goal — and he scored. I’ll never forget it.”
While making great strides as a hurler, Long had always nurtured an enthusiasm for soccer. His chosen team, because of their strong Irish contingent at the time, was Leeds United, with Dave O’Leary as manager and Robbie Keane, Gary Kelly and Ian Harte among the boys in white. “The first time I played against Leeds for Reading I got Gary Kelly’s shirt and I still have it at home,” he reveals. “A bit surreal but nice.” And, completing the circle, the veteran Ian Harte is now a team-mate of Long’s at the Madejski.
But it wasn’t until he was 13 that Shane played organised football for the first time, his dad encouraged by a friend to bring his son to the St Kevin’s club, in Two Mile Borris, to “see what he’s got”. He clearly had something and, after two years there, moved on to St Michael’s in Tipperary town which is where he came to the attention of a Cork City scout — though not before a simple error on Long’s part had initially created a less than favourable impression.
“I remember I turned up for a game at half-time — I thought the kick off was at 12 but it was at 11. And he was there to scout me. He wasn’t very impressed. But I came on and scored a hat-trick in the game. So he was smiling after that. Then he got on to Pat Dolan to come up a watch me play a game and Pat always says that the second he walked in the gate, I dribbled up the whole pitch and scored. So I suppose there were lucky things that happened at the right time that caught people’s eye.”
But, for all Cork City’s enthusiasm, the 16-year-old Long was faced with a difficult decision.
“At the start I’d more or less been playing soccer to keep fit over the winter for the hurling and it was nice because I had something to play all year round,” he remembers. “So hurling was still my main sport but when Cork City came in, it made me think twice. I didn’t want to have any regrets. My dad was after passing away and my mum talked to me about playing the soccer. So I went down to Cork and gave it a shot — and I’m glad I did now.”
Not everyone saw it that way at the time, mind you, especially not those for whom the idea of a promising Tipp hurler turning his back on his sporting birthright bordered on sacrilege.
“Only family were really behind me — everyone else seemed to think I was mad,” Shane admits. “Up to that point, all I dreamt about was hurling for the senior team and I was so close to doing that. At the same time, I was looking at the Premiership every week and soccer was big in my life as well at that stage. It was a tough decision but, at the time I just thought I’d go for it, give it a year or two, and if it didn’t work I could always go back to the hurling.”
LONG had been playing as a central midfielder for St Michael’s but, keen to exploit his strength and pace, he was promptly converted into a striker in Cork. In his year and a half on Leeside, he made just two appearances from the bench for the first team, totalling some 15 minutes of League of Ireland experience. But then this was a star-studded Cork side, the bulk of whom would go on to win the title in 2005.
“They were very good,” Long acknowledges. “We had Kevin Doyle, Neale Fenn, Denis Behan and John O’Flynn as strikers, so it was hard to get in. But I learned a lot down there.”
Then, virtually out of the blue, came perhaps the single biggest turning point in his career, when Reading’s scout Brian McDermott (now the team’s manager) came to Ireland to look at Kevin Doyle and saw Shane playing in a pre-season game.
“They liked what they saw and asked us if we wanted to go,” Long recalls. “And to be fair, I don’t think Cork were too upset about me leaving because I hadn’t done a lot. They were more focused on Kevin leaving the club. But when Pat Dolan said Reading were interested and would I like to go across to England, straight away I said: where do I sign? Even though the eircom league was good at the time, I wanted to give it a go in England.”
THE move to Reading, then managed by Steve Coppell, was a huge step up for Long and, looking back, he concedes that he was “technically raw” compared to the English lads at Reading who’d spent all their lives playing football. Yet, his hurling background stood him: he was strong, athletic and fearless in the physical battle. And the amateur ethos had bestowed a love of playing for its own sake, as well as deep-seated desire to win.
“The coaches were very patient with me,” he says, “but I think they looked at me as a breath of fresh air. I always got stuck in. I wasn’t what they’d call a ‘foreign footballer’. I wasn’t diving or anything like that. I was a bit more old school. A lot of the Dublin players, like a lot of the English lads, are technically very good but I think the likes of Kevin (Doyle) and Stephen (Hunt) and me would bring something a bit different to it. Even now, losing hurts so much and it doesn’t matter that you still get paid at the end of the day. Losing hurts some players more than others and I think Kevin and Stephen would be much the same as me in that respect. A lot of people have said to me that I’m a bad loser but I can’t understand how anyone can be a good loser.”
When Stephen Hunt fetched up at the Madejski, the boys from the County Reading were born. And, taking their hurleys onto the training pitch, they did their best to convert the uninitiated.
“If you try and explain hurling to anyone who doesn’t know it, it sounds like the most horrible sport you could ever play,” says Shane. “Brutal. Hitting each other with sticks. I don’t think they appreciated how big it is in Ireland and how great a game it is.”
But there could be no going back to his first love for Shane Long. Football had him firmly in its grip now.
“The first season was magic. We came over, Kevin got straight in, scored about 20 goals and we got promoted. I came off the bench when we were 2-1 down away to Derby and scored my first goal to keep the unbeaten run going. It was massive. Then there were two seasons in the Premiership and I was thinking: how did all this happen in the space of three or four years? I remember my first start in the Premiership was against Arsenal and this was the era of Henry and the rest Michael’s — I think we got beaten 4-0. To be standing beside them in the tunnel and walking out onto the pitch, you’d almost be pinching yourself. It was amazing at the time — and it’d be nice to get back there.”
The note of regret points to the lowest moment in his career to date — Reading’s relegation back to the Championship in the dying moments of the final day of the season in 2008.
“It was a horrible time but these things happen in the game. But, looking back on it, I was only coming off the bench every now and again for 15 minutes at that stage, so probably getting relegated was good for me, because I started to play 90 minutes regularly and learn more about the game. It’s funny, everyone calls me one of the experienced players on the team now and I’m still only 23. When I look around the dressing room now there’s only (club captain) Ivar Ingimarsson that’s been here before me. Even in the programme last week there was a thing about the 150th player to play for Reading at the Madejski and when I went through the list since I’ve been here, I’ve been through 70 different players.”
During the summer he was linked with a move to Birmingham City and, though he recently signed a contract extension with Reading, he makes no bones about his desire to get back playing in the Premiership.
“I’m very happy at Reading at the moment. It’s only really the second half of last season and this season where I have played 90 minutes continuously. I don’t see the need to move but, at the same time, I want to play at the highest level. If the right offer comes in and Reading want to let me go, then so be it. But you only concentrate on putting in your performances on the pitch.”
He certainly hasn’t been found wanting when Reading have come up against Premiership opposition, famously knocking Liverpool out of the FA Cup at Anfield and scoring two more against Aston Villa in a 4-2 defeat in quarter-finals. More recently he’s endured a mini-drought, shipping a fair bit of criticism last Saturday when he failed to convert a sequence of chances in a 0-0 draw with Coventry
“After the game, that does get to me,” he admits. “A lot of the times I’m thinking, what could I have done differently? And a lot of the times, I’ve done everything right and it just didn’t go in the net. Maybe there was a good save or the shot was just a couple of inches off. It gets into your head. But, on the opposite side, last year I scored eight goals in eight games. Every game I was going out thinking: how many am I going to get today? And I know once the first goal comes, I’ll kick on from there.”
Up to recently, Long’s international career had seen categorised as a dependable fringe player, mainly featuring either in friendlies or as an impact player off the bench, but in the recent autumn internationals he served notice that, if circumstances require it, he’s ready to assume a leading role.
“I’d like to think my name is in there with a shout now,” he reflects. “It’s hard to look past Kevin and Robbie for starting positions but I think I did myself no harm in the last few games. Under the gaffer I’d been on the fringes of the team for the last couple of years, yet he always included me in the squads.”
He’s quick to pay tribute to the role Giovanni Trapattoni has played in furthering his football education.
“He helps me out a lot. Even with simple things. One example is that when I’d put the ball out wide I’d just turn and try to get into the box. But he made sure that I didn’t turn my back on the ball when I did that. That kind of thing helps a lot. And you can see it rubbing off on the team. I think we’re very well organised now and a dangerous team to play against.
“And I still think we can win our European Championship group. Beating Armenia away was a big result for us. I was only in the stands but it’s a difficult place to go and they’re a good team as well. Russia still have to go there and other teams have already dropped points there. Going to Slovakia as well and getting a point — even though I think we should have won on the night — was a big result for us. We could always go to Russia and draw or win the game. When you look at the table, it’s still very realistic that we can top the group and go straight to the Euros.”
AWAY from the pitch, 2010 was marked by two starkly contrasting events in Shane Long’s life, the one utterly shocking and the other inexpressibly joyful.
One day last May, in the week leading up to the final game of the season, his car was involved in a collision on the motorway in which, tragically, the other driver lost his life when his vehicle went out of control and plunged off the road. Shane was cleared of any responsibility for the accident but, although he escaped unscathed, he was understandably traumatised by the experience.
“It was horrible but, for the sake of his family, I really don’t want to say much about it,” he says quietly. “It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and it wasn’t a nice place to be.”
Six weeks earlier, his own life had been changed irrevocably, and for the better, with the birth of Teigan, a daughter for himself and girlfriend Kayleah.
“She’s nine months now and this is her first Christmas,” he smiles. “It’s hard to imagine life without her now. I think it’s settled me down a bit more. In a way, it’s made me concentrate even more on trying to do well at football because I’ve another life to support now, someone else who’s dependent on me. And she helps me cope with the lows too. Like when you come in after losing and you don’t feel like talking to anyone — and, next thing, there’s my baby girl and she’s smiling at me. That takes your mind off it.
“Some people might think I’m young to be a dad but I’m lucky enough to be in a position in my life now where I don’t have to worry about the financial side of things. I have a girlfriend who’s a great mum — she worked as a nanny before we had Teigan and she’s brilliant with children. One of the reasons a lot of footballers have kids when they’re young is because they have the time to spend with them. And I’m really enjoying it. She’s not walking yet but I think that’s when the real fun is going to begin.”
Teigan is a second grandchild for the other influential woman in Shane Long’s life, his mother Anne. After his father Eamonn died suddenly of a heart attack at 47, when Shane was just 16, it was Ann who supported her son’s football ambitions all the way, first moving with him to Cork and then to Reading. “She had to take out all sorts of loans to try and get me through that time in Cork,” he says. “She went out on a limb and still does. She never misses a game here.”
Of course, no reflection on the year just ending would be complete without reference to another high in Shane Long’s life in 2010 — albeit one which he was obliged to experience via television.
Shane was in the Irish team hotel in Portmarnock, sitting on the edge of his seat, as Tipperary stopped Kilkenny’s drive for five to win the All-Ireland hurling final. And among the Tipp players picking up medals were lads Shane had known and played with in the minors, like Paddy Stapleton. You have to ask: was there a regretful part of Shane Long which thought — that could have been me?
“Obviously, I’d love to have had an All-Ireland hurling medal,” he says, ” but then there I was watching the match in the Irish team hotel wearing an Irish team t-shirt.” He smiles broadly. “So I can hardly complain.”
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