McEneff eager to get that 'football feeling' back at packed Tallaght
RETURNING HOOP: Aaron McEneff sits for a portrait during a Shamrock Rovers media conference at Roadstone Group Sports Club in Dublin. Pic: Seb Daly, Sportsfile
League of Ireland facilities are all the talk but Aaron McEneff would take playing in small stadia with a big crowd any day over being lost in a big stadium before a small crowd.
Not that Tallaght could be considered small.
The newly-built fourth stand will enable Shamrock Rovers to pull 10,000 fans in for their title defence but their new playmaker has come from Australia where barren atmospheres in spanking 50,000-seater arenas were commonplace.
From Down Under, the upside-down transition is eased by a familiar habitat.
McEneff last week became the latest member of the cohort, mirroring comebacks to the champions by Jack Byrne, Graham Burke and Trevor Clarke.
They’ve all boomeranged into Stephen Bradley’s set-up that can create history by winning a fifth league title on the trot.
Their tilt begins on February 16 with the visit of Dundalk and tickets will be scarce.
That’s been the pattern of the Irish scene since the Derryman departed for Hearts during the depths of Covid in early 2021.
Eighteen months in Scotland encompassed promotion, a Scottish Cup final and 22 appearances upon Hearts’ return to the top-flight but the opportunity of a new adventure appealed for professional and personal reasons.
It wasn’t long, however, for the sunny backdrop of the A-League to darken.
As Irish fans engulfed his adopted city of Perth for the women’s World Cup last summer, the city’s flagship club were in a financial meltdown.
He’s glad to have fled Perth Glory in the end, on loan for now anyway, with the 28-year-old embracing the stability of success at Rovers and the sight of Champions League exposure visible in the summer.
His wife and young daughter are enjoying the last of the Aussie rays before following him home and he doesn’t mind swapping the climate for the chillier underfoot conditions of Dublin.
“I'm buzzing to get back playing in the league - I never stopped watching the games,” said the Foylesider, who was a Tottenham apprentice when Harry Kane and fellow northerner Kieran McKenna were teammates.
“Seeing the attendances and just knowing there'll be that proper edge and bite gives you a lift.
“I’m looking forward to having the noise and atmosphere again – it really helps you within the game.
“I had that in Scotland - we had nearly 20,000 every week at Tynecastle – whereas it’s different in Australia.
“There's very good players in the A-league but sometimes it can be misleading watching on TV.
“You play in great stadiums, which look similar to America, but within a 50,000-capacity stadium, you might only get 5,000 fans. That could be after a five-and-a-half-hour flight the day before, dealing with a three-hour time difference and dealing with 35 degrees of heat.
“That football feeling gets lost a little bit. You see the infrastructure like the stadiums but the reality is we then trained in a public park. Sure, I had that a couple of times in Derry but not with dogs walking into the drills.”
Behind the glamorous exterior lay a club entering receivership.
Ken Keogh, brother of former Ireland striker and Perth’s recruiter of McEneff, Andy, got embroiled in takeover talks but the interim damage was salaries defaulting.
“I never had a feeling that the club would go under but from July the league took over and were paying our wages,” explains the midfielder, who came closest to an Ireland senior cap when on the bench against Bulgaria three years ago.
“There was real uncertainty in the changing room. There were attempts at reassurances from the club but the situation never really changed.
“For myself, the missus and kid, after moving to the other side of the world, it was tough at times.” Home comforts attract pressure of a different kind but no smaller in significance.
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