Saints mission thrills Treacy
DUBLIN Airport may be directly across the road from St Patrick’s Athletic’s ALSAA training ground, but Keith Treacy has absolutely no desire to catch a flight back to England and resume his career there. Even as plane after plane departs overhead there isn’t a wistful sense of the career he once had, or all the trappings that came with it. ‘Not the lifestyle, I’m a married man now so the lifestyle had to change,’ he said with a smile. ‘The money? It’s not so much the money that annoys you. I watched Brighton play Leeds [on Monday night], I’m looking at players and thinking, “He’s s***”, but I’m playing for St Pat’s and he’s playing for Brighton. Little things like that do niggle away at you. But you just have to make peace with it and let it go. ‘Every time you go into the pub or wherever with your mates, there is always football on, there is always people talking about football. ‘I’m done with England to be honest,’ added the 27-year-old. ‘I had a couple of offers before I went to Drogheda but nothing that I ever really wanted to do. I had two kids, I was just married. I felt like I was missing out on way too much and the best thing to do for me and my family was to come home.’ So he did. The six-times capped Republic of Ireland international, who had a taste of the Premier League with Blackburn Rovers as a teenager, signed with the Boynesiders late last August for the final two months of the season. But the man who convinced him to end his self-enforced eight-month sabbatical from the game following an unhappy five-month spell with Barnsley at the back end of 2014, was soon shown the door at United Park. ‘It’s probably not the nicest thing in the world to say, that I wasn’t emotionally invested in it, but it was what it was,’ Treacy admitted. ‘Coming to Pat’s, I’m ready to go full time again. Mentally I’m in a lot better place than I was in England so I’m a lot happier,’ he said. ‘I’m a lot poorer but I’m a lot happier.’ A knee injury has niggled at him for the past month of pre-season and after undergoing minor keyhole surgery he may have to wait until after Friday’s opening game with Galway to feature.
As part of St Patrick’s Athletic’s ‘Your Community, Your Club initiative’ ,tickets for Friday’ s game are €15 for one adult and U 12 child, with free scarves for the first 300 kids