An Irishman Abroad with Padraig Amond - Part 1

Extratime.ie reporter Thomas Sargent recently caught up with new Grimsby Town signing Pádraig Amond in The Precinct, also known as Freshney Place Shopping Centre, and the former Kildare County, Shamrock Rovers and Sligo Rovers spared of an hour of his time to divulge his thoughts on the League of Ireland, his arrival in Lincolnshire and his time in Portugal amongst other interesting topics. Part one of this two part interview is below.

TS: Pádraig, thanks for taking the time out to do this interview. Welcome to Grimsby Town FC and Lincolnshire. Congratulations on a brilliant pre-season and your first league goal on Saturday at Kidderminster Harriers. You must be really pleased the way things have started here?

PA: Yeah, I suppose pre-season has been a dream, well, it has been a dream for me and the club. When you join a new club as a striker the first thing you want to do is score your first goal and get the monkey off your back so thankfully I got it over and done with after a couple of minutes. Then with how pre-season went, it just went so well. I was praying my first league wasn’t 15 games into the season and because I was scoring so regularly (in pre-season Pádraig scored 9 for The Mariners). I put pressure on myself and I missed an early chance on Saturday so all I could think was this is going to happen now, I’m going to go about 10 games without scoring! Thankfully, I scored with my next chance and it’s nice to get that off my back early doors and hopefully it’s the first of many this season.

TS: How did the move to Grimsby come about because I understand there was a couple of other clubs interested?

PA: I spoke to a number of clubs in the summer from a few different countries and I spoke to Doigy (Chris Doig), the assistant manager, and he and the manager Paul Hurst were very keen on me signing. It just went on from there – I spoke to them a couple of times and just before pre-season I agreed.

There were couple of things holding it up but thankfully it did go through in the end. I had a couple of other options – and I nearly went through with them – but I’m glad now that I decided to go the Grimsby way. I knew it was a big football club. I just didn’t realise how big it was to be honest.
 

TS: In terms of standards, how do you think the Conference – or National League as it’s now called – and Leagues 1 and 2 compare to the League of Ireland?

PA: I suppose it’s a hard question. I think the League of Ireland now is smaller than when I left it. A lot of good players have left – the likes of Séamus Coleman, Enda Stephens, Jay O’Shea all left and they have gone on to have really, really good careers of which obviously Séamus has been the stand out one. I would have always been in the camp, when I was in Ireland, that the Irish league was as strong as the top of League 1 but I suppose on their day a League of Ireland team can beat anybody, from probably the bottom five in the Championship down but it’s putting it all together which is the big problem.

In Ireland at the start of the season there is probably three or four teams that can win the league. Because there’s only 12 teams in the league, Athlone and Longford aren’t going to win the league so nine times out of ten Dundalk would beat Longford. They drew at the weekend though which somewhat blew the title race wide open again!

Dundalk are a fantastic team and they’ve got some great players. Richie Towell is a very special talent. I remember when I was at Crumlin United under 16’s and he was in the under 13’s when he trained with us a couple of times, you could tell then he was a talented player. I suppose trying to compare the two is very, very difficult but in a one off game anything can happen but over the course of 46 games I don’t know what way it would go. It’s very hard to compare the two of them I think.

TS: That somewhat answers my next question which was do you still keep up with the League of Ireland because your two former clubs, Shamrock Rovers and Sligo Rovers, are having contrasting seasons?

PA: Yeah, of course, I’m a Shamrock Rovers fan and have been ever since I started playing for the club when I was 10. I still speak to a few of the lads that are there and ones that are at Sligo as well. I had great times at the two clubs.

I loved playing for Shamrock Rovers. It was brilliant coming through the school boys. I remember when I was in the under 11’s and there was talk of us playing in Tallaght and I remember it was 10 years before it happened and then I was left out of the first game! I was involved in the first team around that time though.

Then when I was at Sligo Rovers it was arguably the best time I have had in my career. I owe a lot to the management staff there and the players who were there at the time. I think we had a very, very good team and probably when they got rid of the deadwood like myself they went on to win all the trophies!

I look at the results every week. Like I said, Dundalk have been fantastic, Pats are starting to peg them back a little bit now and it could go anywhere towards the end of the season. I expect Dundalk to hold out though because they have signed a couple of good strikers in Sean Maguire and Ciaran (Kilduff). I played with him all the way up through schoolboys as well so I know how good he is.

Rovers have just been unlucky with injuries – their three marquee players are out at the minute McCabe, Damien Duff and Keith Fahey as well. If Rovers could get their best eleven out each week I think they are a challenge for anybody in Ireland. It’s hard for them to keep all the players fit the minute. I’d love to see them win the league but it’s not going to happen so hopefully next year.

TS: Do you expect any League of Ireland players in particular to be moving away from Ireland soon?

PA: Obviously Richie Towell is the marquee player. Every game he plays he seems to dictate the game, he scores his fair share of goals as well. There’s a few other players – at Rovers Marty Waters is doing really well and Mikey Drennan has gone back and he’s doing really well. That could be a short stay for him depending on how he feels about it all. There’s players everywhere, y’know, Sean Hoare at Pats is an extremely good centre half. I’ve watched him play a few times and there’s been talk of him moving already. I suppose the beauty of it all is that each club has a couple of players that could make the step up. It’s just a case of whether they want to do it. 

You can read the second part of this interview with Pádraig Amond here.