Green day dawns for Pilkington

At the sixth time of asking, Anthony Pilkington has finally been able to answer Ireland’s call.

We’ve had explanations, apologies, medical reports, pictures of his kids in Irish shirts and, over the weekend, even a fresh tweeted image of his passport and boarding card and, now, finally, here he is in the flesh, sitting in a dressing room at Gannon Park after his first training session with Giovanni Trapattoni’s squad.

The root cause of the long delay can be located in the Norwich winger’s knee, where tendonitis has become a recurring problem.

“It never leaves you alone,” says the 26-year-old. “You have good weeks and bad weeks, it’s just how you manage it.”

Recent relief has come via an injection but Pilkington must remain ever alert to the condition.

“You’ve got to be careful how much you do on the training field and how much you do in the gym,” he says. “But I’ve been working hard back in Norwich and I’ve got a programme to follow over here as well and it feels quite good at the moment.”

Pilkington qualifies for Ireland through his late grandmother on his father’s side, the family hailing from Templeogue in South Dublin. And, notwithstanding all the false starts to his senior international career — after he’d previously earned just one U21 cap for the country — Pilkington continued to remain fixed in Trapattoni’s thoughts, something which was much appreciated by the player.

“Yeah, definitely. It was frustrating getting called up to the squad and having to pull out. I think the first time we were playing QPR — an early kick off on Sky — and I had my suitcase packed and was ready to fly over with Wes [Hoolahan] in the afternoon. But then I pulled up with a hamstring. And after that I’ve been a bit unlucky with the knee problem. But, like I say, hopefully that’s behind me now and I can concentrate on doing well for the country.”

Throughout his career, Pilkington has known something about delayed gratification, to the extent that during a period of struggle as a teenager at Blackburn Rovers — where he looked up to Damien Duff as “a great, great player” — he retreated from the pro game and opted to go to college to undertake football studies.

“We were doing coaching badges, different sciences to work with football, all that stuff,” he recalls. “I’d dropped out of the scholarships when I was 15, I wasn’t enjoying my football then. Your friends are doing whatever they want to do and you’re off training every day. I think it was a little bit too much, too young, that kinda thing. So I wasn’t really enjoying it at Blackburn but then I started playing for the college team and then non-league and I started really enjoying it again. You play your best football with a smile on your face, everyone will tell you that.”

Still, he freely admits that, at one point, he was sure a career as a professional footballer had passed him by.

“Yes, because of the standard I was playing at — the third division of a Sunday league, a pub league. Obviously, I did not really think that there would be an opportunity but I started to enjoy my football then and began to play well. Then I got to play non-league again and Stockport asked me if I could go training there a few times a week. It went from there.”

Having subsequently risen through the leagues, Pilkington is now an established Premier League player with Norwich and, depending on how well he goes in training this week, could even make his international debut against Sweden on Friday. Having played just 70 minutes in the last two months, however, fitness is an issue.

“I played at Bury last Tuesday and the previous game was in the first week of pre-season,” he notes. “I’ve not trained much either but I have been working hard in the gym at Norwich with fitness coaches. So I feel alright. All you want to do is play football and there is no bigger stage than the international stage. It would be unbelievable to pull the jersey on and get out there and show the fans what I can do.”