Trap should stay for the long haul, says Shane

WE meet Shane Long on the morning after Reading have beaten Preston 2-1 to haul themselves into a play-off spot in the Championship.

So, obviously, the first question we have to ask is: where did it all go wrong last night, Shane? The striker does a confused double-take: “Huh?”

You didn’t score?

The penny drops and Long, who has been in irrepressible form for club and country of late, smiles ruefully.

“I know yeah, we won the game but I came off the pitch angry with myself for not scoring. It’s not a bad way to be but the result was the main thing. We’re seven points off second position so anything is possible.”

As well as hoping to help Reading back into the top-flight, Long also has a personal ambition this season: to overhaul Watford’s Danny Graham and claim the Championship’s top scorer gong.

“I think he has 23 but who’s counting! I’m three behind him. He scored a lot of goals at the start of the season and opened up a big lead. I’ve been biting at his heels ever since. There are seven games to go so a few hat-tricks wouldn’t go astray.”

Of course, should the Royals not make it up to the Premier league, it’s almost certain that the in-form Long will, though the level-headed 24-year-old is not prepared to indulge in media speculation about where else he might end up next season.

“I have been brought up to think about the next game and Reading have been good to me, so I want to repay the favour and help get them back to the Premiership,” he said.

Happily for Giovanni Trapattoni, the significant improvement in Long’s form and strike-rate has carried over into the international arena, most recently in the friendly against Uruguay when the striker crowned a man of the match performance with a fine headed goal.

Following that game, Trapattoni indicated said he would like to stay on and try to steer Ireland to the World Cup finals in Brazil in 2014 and, regardless of whether or not the current European championship campaign ends in qualification, Long says he would like to see the manager remain in his post.

“Definitely, I think every player learns so much from him. I know, personally, I do anyway. He tells you things which, after he tells you, seem so simple but it adds to your game a lot.

“It’s just his experience, being in the game for so long. He’s added to every player’s game and the longer he’s over Irish football the better for it.

“Him and Marco (Tardelli), the two of them kind of look after me and train me up a bit. When I come into the Irish squad, I learn something new every time. I suppose how can’t you learn from a manager who has won as many accolades as him? Yeah, they’ve definitely added to my game a lot and are part of the reason why I’m scoring.”

And when you ask Long what he would say to the critics of Trapattoni’s style of football, well, the answer could come straight from the mouth of the Italian himself.

“We’re joint top of the table and in a great position of making the Europeans. It’s working for us. We’re getting results on the board which, I think, sometimes in the past we wouldn’t do. It worked for Italy as well in all their years of football. I think it’s the right way to go. If you’re one up, it’s just as good as a 4-0 win, you still get the three points on the board. It’s the right way to go.”

Meanwhile, the former Tipperary minor hurler revealed he hasn’t lost touch with his roots. The Gortnahoe man hoped to puck a few balls with the Waterford hurlers when they train at Reading’s Madejski Stadium on Sunday but matches away to Nottingham Forest on Saturday and Scunthorpe on Tuesday mean he’ll be based up north for a few days.

“But I met Davy Fitzgerald during the week and told him a few times that I was shouting him down from the stands when he was playing for Clare against Tipp,” Long grinned.

“He came over to check the place out and organise a few things. I had a good chat with him and he’s a top man to be fair.”

* Shane Long was speaking at the launch in Home Farm of the 2011 An Post FAI Summer Schools which will see some 23,000 children participating at over 300 venues nationwide in July and August. See www.summerschools.ie for further details.