Long shortens odds of glory

IT’S the ideal way to bounce into an important international week: by scoring your third goal for your new team and heading off with words of praise from your club manager ringing in your ears.

“I don’t think we paid a lot for potential,” said Roy Hodgson of Shane Long after West Brom’s 2-2 draw with Sunderland on Saturday, the manager going on to dispute the price, if not the value, of the €7 million the Premiership side reportedly paid for the Reading striker. “The figures quoted are wrong, I am not saying how much it was but I have seen the quotes. He might be the bargain of the year, as it turns out.”

Long has certainly hit the ground running at West Brom and says he’s enjoying playing for “a passing-orientated manager” at a club where history can hang heavy on the shoulders of a front man. “As I found out when I was given the number nine shirt,” he smiles. “There’s a lot of pressure but it’s good pressure for me. It pushes me to be on top of my game.”

Personal advancement did not come without a cost, however, the Tipperary lad admitting that it was a real wrench to leave his English home from home at Reading.

“There were six years of friendships so it was tough to move on but that’s part of football,” he says. “I wanted to test myself in the Premier League.

“I’d tried my best to get Reading there so I could test myself with them but it wasn’t to be. In fact, I never asked to leave the club but when the offer came from West Brom and the club accepted, I went to meet Roy and see the club and I knew straight away it was the right move for me.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t immediately able to carry his club form into the international arena, a calf muscle ruling him out of last month’s double-header against Slovakia and Russia.

Giovanni Trapattoni seemed baffled by the injury — which Long says a scan confirmed to be a double tear — and also less than impressed when the striker was back in action for his club just five days after missing the game in Moscow. But Long insists that he was just unlucky.

“Obviously, I’d give anything to play for my country and the Slovakia match was the first time I’d got the nod ahead of Kevin [Doyle] as well,” he says. “It was just bad timing. It turned out to be a seven to 10-day injury but it was just the wrong seven to 10 days for me.”

But now Long is fully fit and focused on the Euro qualifiers at home to Armenia and, first, away to Andorra. And having made his senior debut as a sub on the night Ireland squeaked home against San Marino, Long needs no reminding of just how slippery these banana skins can be.

“It was a horrible pitch and they had 10 men behind the ball,” he recalls. “It’s hard going into a game as massive favourites. If you win four or five nil, that’s only expected. In San Marino we won 2-1 and it was seen as a bad night but, at the same time, it was three points on the board and job done. So I think if we get a 2-1 in Andorra on Friday night it will be the same sort of thing. Six points in the next two games could open up a whole new ball game.”

Or, possibly, an all-too familiar ball game — as in, the dreaded play-offs.

“We came away from Paris never wanting to feel that feeling again,” says Long, “so if does go down to a play-off we’ll have been there, done that and known the heartache. And I think that’ll stand us in good stead. But I still think it’s very possible for us to top the group.”

Meanwhile, Kevin Kilbane is definitely out of the Irish squad which gathers in Dublin today after the Derby County full-back failed to recover in time from a combined back and hamstring problem.

* Shane Long is an EA Sports, FIFA 12 Ambassador. FIFA 12 is out now in stores nationwide.