Gavin Kilkenny: Season on loan would be 'ideal'

Last season, Kilkenny was the early bolter of the Cherries side by starting the opening seven games.

Tue, 31 May, 2022 - 23:00

John Fallon

Once the promotion celebrations subside, a reality check dawns for a clump of players at every Premier League-bound employer.

Nottingham Forest’s squad are still in the throes of their Wembley Championship playoff success party from Sunday, some acutely aware of the inevitably that follows.

Fulham and Norwich City are the standard-bearers of the truism that promotion is a different animal to surviving the next level.

Scott Parker knows it more than most, having seen his Fulham side plummet straight back into the second tier in 2021.

He was recruited by Bournemouth this time last year to replicate the trick, minus the second part, and was promised the funds to make it happen.

Amid the splurge that’s imminent, the squeeze will come on the incumbents. Not all, in fact several, won’t be needed to forage for scraps at the top table.

Gavin Kilkenny possesses the awareness to understand his place in the pecking order. Last season, he was the early bolter of the Cherries side by starting the opening seven games.

This is a different story and Parker’s soreness from his last visit to the Premier League petrifies him of risk.

Of the three Irishmen at the Vitality Stadium, goalkeeper Mark Travers is a shoo-in to feature prominently, Robbie Brady won’t, even if he accepts his contract extension, while the expensive midfielders set to be recruited will smother Kilkenny’s chances.

“Ultimately, you have to be realistic,” says the Ireland U21 midfield mainstay.

“With Bournemouth going into the Premier League, a lot of people are asking if I’m going on loan and that’s probably what I’m thinking now.

“I tried to go previously but they wouldn’t let me. Maybe they were right because I’ve seen a lot of loans not work out.

“It can be tough going on loan but I’ve two years left on my contract and, at 22, I’m at an age where a loan would be good for me.

“Even if it’s a case of going away for a year or six months, coming back and then playing, that’s an ideal situation.” Whatever loan club he ends up at, it’ll be in the holding midfield role he’s mastered over the past year.

Traditionally a nippy wideman, Kilkenny was converted by Parker and it’s been the position he’s thrived in at international level too.

He’s gone from slipping out of the U21 squad two years ago during the transition between Stephen Kenny and Jim Crawford to being a first-choice.

The paucity of those prototypes in the senior squad has linked him to graduation but reaching the U21 Euros consumes his international ambitions for the time being.

Wins over lower seeds Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro at home over this long weekend, easier said than done, will all but seal progression to the playoffs in September.

“Myself, Conor Coventry and Brian Maher are the more senior players in this U21 squad but a lot of the time we don’t need to tell any of the younger ones what to do,” he said of the group dynamic.

“If anything, someone like Evan Ferguson tells me what to do. There are no bad eggs and we know how important these pair of games are.”