Kearney hungry for success at Cork

Photo courtesy Peadar O'Sullivan

The saying goes “never go back to an ex”, but that in many ways is what has happened on Leeside this off-season. Billy Dennehy, Darren Murphy and Liam Kearney are all “new” additions to the Cork City ranks, but all have played for the Turner’s Cross club previously.

Manager John Caulfield is also making a return to the club at which he made his name as a player, and he brings with him another ex-player, John Cotter, to sit by his side on the bench.

This of course is not an unusual scenario in a league of short contracts. Current Premier Division champions St Patrick’s Athletic will also bring three re-joining players (Mark Quigley, Keith Fahey and James Chambers) with them when they travel to Cork City in the 2014 ESS Airtricity Premier Division curtain raiser on March 7^th.

When Extratime.ie caught up with Liam Kearney this week though, we found a player brimming with enthusiasm and excitement as if he was awaiting his first debut at the club and not his third.

“It’s great to be honest. I was back probably since August last year and I tried to sort things out and come back then but because it wasn’t in the July transfer window I just missed it. So I had to wait until this one to come back again.

“I couldn’t wait to get back playing. I played a friendly against West Brom and I thought it was just a case of just sorting things out and then I’d be able to come back. Obviously the problems of the fact I was back too late meant I couldn’t.”

With the prospect of a third spell at the club put on ice and the ‘Conna Maradonna’ banners put back into temporary storage at Turner’s Cross, Kearney was keen to get back playing and joined Cork side Avondale United.

“At the same time I was lucky enough that I kept ticking over in the Munster Senior League with the top team Avondale, so that kept me fit anyway and kept me kind of sharp.

“So I was glad when John Caulfield came and he asked me to come back.

“Because there is a lot of ex-League of Ireland players playing there, the set up for an amateur team was very professional. It was quite easy then to kind of keep me going and keep my head right because I wasn’t feeling like I was after stepping down too much.

“No, I enjoyed my time there. They’ve a good manager there in John Ryan and they’ve a good setup. Even from the start John Ryan was there ‘look I know you’re hungry to get back playing in the League of Ireland’ he said, ‘so we’ll accommodate you in every way we can’ – and it was exactly what they did in the end and I’m very grateful for that.”

The former Nottingham Forest youth player made his first debut for Cork City when he came off the bench to score in the 2-1 league defeat to Bohemians in September 2003. The left winger was also to score in his debut for the Republic of Ireland under 21 team against Italy in the Madeira tournament in 200X, but he is not getting carried away ahead at the prospect of another goalscoring debut on March 7^th.

“Well look, my first job is to get myself into the team. Obviously there’s a lot of competition there.

“If I can get myself into the team by then, I’ll be delighted and that’s my goal. If I can either set one up or bang one in, as long as we’re winning I don’t mind.

“Obviously it would be nice to bang one in on my debut again but we’ll see what happens.”

Kearney’s first spell at Turner’s Cross yielded a league title in 2005 before joining Shelbourne to win another one in 2006. A return to Leeside in 2007 saw him win an FAI Cup winners medal with the Rebel Army and a Setanta Sports Cup win in 2008 (in which he scored the winning goal) made it an impressive four trophies in four years for the ‘Conna Maradonna’.

As dark clouds circled overhead at Cork City and the club facing financial difficulties preventing them from offering the fans favourite a contract, Kearney joined Stephen Kenny’s Derry City in January 2009. A broken leg hampered his stay with the Candystripes and the diminutive winger moved back to Munster in 2010 to play for Waterford United.

After missing out on promotion with Waterford in 2010, Kearney made the perhaps surprising move to Australia when he joined Dandenong Thunder in January 2011, and that is where he played until returning to Ireland last summer.

It was an enjoyable two and a half years for the Corkman as he was to win more honours down under.

“We’d a great couple of years, we won the league and the cup in the one year, and I really enjoyed my time over in Australia to be honest.

“The lifestyle too. You could finish training there, then you’d come home and go down to the beach for a couple of hours.

“I was down in Kerry at a training camp last weekend and it was a bit different. There was swirling winds and rain pelting down but at the same time I loved it in a weird kind of way.”

Having recently seen former teammates Joe Gamble and Roy O’Donovan complete unorthodox transfers to Brunei DPMM, Kearney revealed to Extratime.ie he too had the opportunity to play football in Asia.

“Well I spoke to Georgie and he was saying to me ‘look, there could be an option to come over here and play for a club in Bangkok’, I was saying ‘Jeez I don’t know, that’s a bit of a strange one’.

“But he said ‘come over and have a look’ and I went over and trained with a couple of teams and I actually had an offer to go to a team as well over there.

“Bangkok – while it sounded good I felt with the couple of months beforehand when I had hoped to go back to Cork and then to kind of have that thrown up, I felt it wasn’t the right option at the time.

“Especially because I’m doing a personal training course which I’m nearly finished, I didn’t want to stop that half way through and have nothing to show for it. Fair enough it would have been a short term gap to keep me going for a year. To be honest my heart had always been to come back to Cork and I just turned 31. So I still think there’s trophies there to be won and hopefully we can get the best out of this year now and see what happens.”

As our conversation turns to his previous spells at the club, it is clear that the pull of Cork City was never going to be matched by another club, in Asia or anywhere else.

“The nights we had back then, when we look at it, those European nights are nights you’ll never forget. It kind makes me sad in one way as well, where could the club have gone from there. I think there was huge potential for the club to grow and grow and grow, but I suppose every club at the time didn’t see the bubble bursting the way it did.

“Great memories and I just feel that now it’s the right time to be coming back. I have got more hunger now than I probably ever did. I’m older and wise, I can see the bigger picture maybe a bit in terms of – it’s not just about you it’s about what you can do for other fellas as well and help them improve their game as well.

“I just feel privileged and honoured to be back here again and the drive I have and the drive I feel that’s in the dressing room… people mightn’t have big thoughts on us this year, but inside personally I think you never know what’ll happen.”

The tone in Kearney’s voice defies him and it is clear that he doesn’t view Cork City as ‘just another club’. And why should he, as his time at the club corresponded to what is considered by many to be the ‘golden era’ in the clubs history – and all the while Kearney was instrumental.

A goal in his debut in front of the Turner’s Cross faithful in 2003 was to give them a taste of what was to come. In 2004 Kearney would score the only goal in a famous European victory away to Malmo and on the last night of the 2005 season he scored the second goal in the club’s 2-0 win against Derry City – a goal that effectively sealed the title for Cork City.

In 2007 Kearney almost singlehandedly booked his side’s place in the FAI Cup Final by scoring both goals in the 2-0 semi-final win over Bohemians, while in 2008 Setanta Sports Cup final was settled by a solitary goal scored by, you guessed it, Liam Kearney.

There is arguably no-one who has scored as many key goals for Cork City, and we asked Kearney which was his favourite of the bunch.

“I don’t know really. It’s weird because I wasn’t a particularly prolific goalscorer at all. I probably scored maybe five or six goals a year whenever I did play, but it just happened to be that on the nights of a final or something like that I just popped up in the right place.

“I suppose the goal on the night we won the league probably stands out in my head. I knew going into the night that we had to win the game against Derry in 2005. Flynny got the first one which obviously took a bit of pressure off of us, because we were on our way then to a point. And it wasn’t a great goal or anything but when it went in I knew then we were going to win the league. That feeling inside when you’re in the stadium and it’s full and it’s at home in Cork, I knew what it meant to the team and I knew what it meant to the fans and everyone and it was just a sense of how big the moment was and you’ll never forget things like that and what it meant to other people.

“I’d love to get those kind of crowds back in, but like anyone knows in Cork, if you’re doing well the crowds will come and if you’re up there competing they’ll want to know what’s happening.

“If we can get ourselves into contention. It is difficult, the likes of Dundalk and these teams have got big squads and maybe we don’t have as big a squad or budget, but maybe if we got a group that’s together and that are willing to fight for each other, there’s no reason why we can’t compete.”

The 31 year-old is not the only left winger to be signed in the off-season, and despite the potential battle with Billy Dennehy for the same spot Kearney was happy to see Dennehy sign and doesn’t rule out both featuring at the same time.

“I think to be honest I’m delighted to come back to see a player of the type and the quality of Billy. Even in the games so far he has probably been our best player in every game.

“I think we’re actually different players in a certain way now. Maybe going back a couple of years ago I would have been similar and as direct as Billy is. But Billy is a fantastic player and the more quality players we have the better and I think we can definitely play together and even in games so far we have worked well together in different positions.

“I think if you don’t have competition for places all over the pitch, you’re going nowhere. That’s what you want and I’m delighted he’s here and hopefully together we can bang in a few goals together.”

The ‘Conna Maradonna’ is not just impressed with Dennehy but equally with the rest of the squad he is joining. He enthuses about the likes of Danny Morrissey too who he describes as a “huge talent” and insists “we’re very lucky to have him for the season”. When asked to assess his team’s chances in 2014, Kearney’s view is clear.

“Well I’ll put it this way. Right now I’m looking at the squad and I’m saying we obviously need to keep everyone fit. That’s a huge thing because obviously wemightn’t have the depth that other teams have got.

“But the togetherness, the work-rate and the fitness – all of those things are going to be there and I can only speak for myself right now but my desire has never been as much to go on and to win something this year.

“I think that the optimism is huge and if it wasn’t, then what’s the point. If I didn’t believe that we could go on and win something this year, then I wouldn’t be here.

“I hope everyone else feels that way because otherwise we’re wasting our time.

“On any given day we saw that last year the team was well able to beat the best in the league. I think it’s just consistency. The biggest thing for me is to be able to go into a match, play terrible and come away with a 1-0 win. If we can do things like that, be a bit more ruthless and I think under John we will. You need to have the dirty side to you, to do what it takes and on a horrible day when nothing’s going right for you but just to be able to dig in and fight for the win and to know what the big picture is.

“Some days it’s not all going to be pretty football. I’m a winger, I like the ball on the ground but I know there’s going to be days when you just have to do your job and get the result.

“I think John’s going to instil that in us and we’ll have to use that as the season goes on.”

It’s not just down to the players however and Kearney reiterates his desire to see a full Turner’s Cross again. The importance of this is something he feels is often understated and we ask Cork City’s number 30 just how important is the role of the Cork City supporters.

“It’s huge. Cork over the years – you remember the nights when everyone’s up on their feet singing ‘Stand up for the Cork City’ or whatever song about the players that they loved at the time. It is underestimated how much that means to players. When the last ten minutes kicks in and you’re 1-0 up to whoever it was…Shels or Bohs or whatever…it just gives you an extra gear and really pushes you on to go ‘right, that’s it, we’re not losing here today and we’re getting that win today’ and you knew that after games like that that the crowd appreciated it and the whole city is buzzing.

“There’s no reason why we can’t bring back those days, and I think if we can get a good crowd and get momentum going from the first game on, you just don’t know where the season will go.

“It’s just a case of building and building and the confidence begins to ooze through the players and we can break down barriers and push on.

“You can probably here from my voice that I’m excited about it and I can’t wait to go now.”