Casey following Con’s lead to become boy wonder at Bohs
CON O’Callaghan may be the wunderkind of Gaelic Games but it is one of his former Dublin teammates who is the current darling of Bohemians.
Dan Casey netted a derby day double against Shamrock Rovers on Friday night as he celebrated his first senior goals in the Gypsies’ 3-1 win over their fiercest rivals.
The 20-year-old centre back returned to Ireland last summer following four years with Sunderland and had no qualms about continuing down his chosen path in the League of Ireland rather than across the water in Britain.
Along with 21-year-old teammate Oscar Brennan, Casey also volunteers at Mountjoy Prison as part of the work done by the Bohemian Foundation in the local community.
A talented centre half-forward in the same Cuala side as O’Callaghan, Casey represented Dublin’s Under-16 footballers as well as turning out for his school rugby team, CBS Monkstown, at second centre before making the decision to pursue his true passion.
‘I had a choice to make but football was always going to be the winner,’ he explained.
A native of Dún Laoghaire, Casey did not made the progress he hoped at Sunderland but he has not let those frustrations hold him back at Dalymount Park. And, as fate would have it, his former schoolboy manager at St Kevin’s Boys, Keith Long, is in charge at Bohs and was only too happy to bring him on board.
‘I was coming up to 20, I needed to play first team football,’ Casey reasoned.
‘Luckily Keith took me in and first team football is what you need, you can play all the U23 games you want but it’s not the same vibe as a first team game.
‘In U23 football over there, there are a lot of good technical players but you are playing for nothing where there are people playing for their jobs over here, with U23s you are playing for enjoyment. This is real stuff,’ he added.
‘I loved it over there, Sunderland were a great club, I can’t say a bad word about them and it definitely helped me as a player. I think I needed to play first team football and it was the right move to come back.
‘You could see last year, playing U23s football you were playing against teams who didn’t care if they lost.
‘This is a different ball game, you have fans, clubs, everyone looking out for you which is important.
‘You don’t want to let them down whereas with U23s, there is no competition in the league which is unfortunate as you can’t really push on.’
Casey spent the final few months of last season acclimatising to what is required in the League of Ireland and it is a situation his new teammate, Eoghan Stokes, finds himself in after joining from Leeds United.
The Republic of Ireland underage international opted against signing for Rovers in favour of Bohs and after a brief cameo off the bench on Friday, Long praised the striker for making what he described as a ‘football decision’.
‘We’re excited about what he will bring to the team for us, it’s something different and I think he’s shown with his decision to come to Bohs that it’s a football decision, that it’s not just about full-time football, resources, money or anything like that,’ Long said.
‘It’s a football decision for him to come to the club, get playing, get himself a platform to come and do his stuff. Hopefully on the back of that he can reach his ambitions.
‘We did a bit of work on him [to convince him to join] and it’s been ongoing for a while. Obviously we were pleased to get him over the line.
‘He’s one that everybody else has been linked with except for us because we’ve gone a little bit under the radar. That’s the way we try to do it.’ It will be hard to maintain if Stokes can follow Casey’s lead.