DUFFY FEELING
Brighton defender at ease with senior role in squad
SHANE DUFFY didn’t think twice as the ball arrived at him at an acute angle during shooting practice in Belek. ‘S**t pass,’ he bellowed before ballooning his effort over the netting behind the goal.
That his anger was directed at Roy Keane, the Republic of Ireland assistant manager, was an indication of how at ease Duffy feels these days in the international set-up.
‘I nearly forgot who I was speaking to when I said it!’ he chuckled yesterday. ‘It’s just about being comfortable.’ The gentle giant is certainly that. Comfortable with his standing as one of the senior players in the Ireland squad and as a Premier League regular with Brighton, for whom he’s completed 29 games out of 30 in the English top flight this season.
It’s a far from his fledging days at Everton, where he made his debut in December 2009.
‘Back then, for the first five minutes you don’t even want the ball. When you get your first header you feel better, but until then you’re thinking about everything, where you are positioned, and looking around. When I played at Everton the first time I was purely raw, I’d just come out of Derry. I was shaking when I was playing,’ he explained.
Now it is centre-forwards who are shaking at the size of this man-mountain from Derry, who can look Niall Quinn squarely in the eye in the claim for Ireland’s tallest footballer.
He hasn’t won every battle this season and admitted yesterday that Eden Hazard and Philippe Coutinho had posed both himself, and Brighton, all sorts of problems.
While he still winces at the memory of the World Cup play-off defeat to Denmark, he has to get his head around how far he has journeyed at club level and with Ireland for whom he made his competitive debut at the Euro 2016 finals and has won 17 caps.
‘How it’s changed in those two years is mad. To be part of the older ones, or the more experienced ones, is a bit weird,’ he said.
So, what’s been the key to his progress?
‘It’s just down to believing in myself,’ he replied. ‘Getting the chance to play at a good level helps. Chris [Hughton] has given me the chance to play in the Premier League where I’m developing and Martin has given me the chance to play on the big stages and in a big tournament.
‘You take little things out of each one of them and it’s all coming together a bit now and hopefully there is more to come. I’m still a bit raw in some things I do, but I’m getting better.’
A measure of his standing was his selection last Sunday night as Ireland’s Player of the Year for 2017. The award caught him unawares, as he felt fellow Derry native James McClean would win.
That Duffy, 26, missed the big night due to snow, seemed out of place as the sun burned down on the Turkish coast yesterday.
He spent most of Sunday killing time in Manchester airport, playing cards with David Meyler. ‘Two flights were cancelled, so we got taxis to Birmingham and then that flight was delayed until 11.30,’ he explained.
‘I didn’t expect it [the award]. I thought maybe for Young Player I had a chance, but I thought James [McClean] had it [the senior award] wrapped up.’
Duffy hadn’t been told in advance and only ‘found out from Seamus [Coleman] who texted me.’
In the end, it was a close call between the Derry pair and Duffy was only half joking when he claimed that ‘James was raging’.
‘To be fair, I thought he deserved it. James was the main man, he scored the big goals and he was very unlucky not to win it. I was more shell-shocked than anything.’
‘I was a bit gutted over missing it [awards ceremony], but I didn’t have to do the speaking so that was alright,’ he said with a smile.
Had things been different last November after he had headed Ireland in front, this week would have seen a gathering of Irish veterans, bound for one last heave in Russia.
Instead, it is a time for renewal, for new blood as O’Neill looks to the Nations League and the Euro 2020 qualifiers.
Duffy is one of just six players in Turkey who got game time in the 5-1 loss to Denmark, a result which still stings. ‘We talk about it, then just shake our heads,’ he said.
‘If you’d offered us one game, at home to Denmark, to make the World Cup, we would have bitten your hand off.
‘We thought we’d done the hard work out there [in Denmark], we then scored at home but we sat back and perhaps that killed us, we should have just kept to our game-plan.
‘We didn’t and that is our own fault. We have to take that on the chin.
‘For the first 10 minutes [in Dublin], I thought I was a hero and then I was a villain, all of us were. But those are the games you look back on and think, “That will make me a better player, I’ll know how to deal with that next time.”
He has dealt with so much that has been thrown at him, not least the life-saving surgery after he perforated his liver on Ireland duty in May 2010.
‘Seamus [Coleman] said to me “you would never believe that you have gone from there to now and you won that award”.
From a boy on the brink, to a man in the arena, Duffy has become O’Neill’s wardrobe, just as Richard Dunne was to Giovanni Trapattoni.
If he has half the international career of Dunne, Ireland will have been served well. So far, so good.