McCarey has a chance to keep the flame alive
MANCHESTER United and Ross County rarely figure in the same football breath but they are drawn together this week by two keepers of the Irish flame, Kieran O’Hara and Aaron McCarey.
If O’Hara is in a place of privilege at Old Trafford where he gets to work with the world’s finest, David de Gea, McCarey, in contrast, is attached to one of football’s outposts in the Scottish Highlands.
The northern exposure of Dingwall is a place for hardy souls and few are more resilient than the Monaghan man.
At 26, he has survived the buffeting of a four-month ban for failing an out of competition drugs test at Wolves in 2015 and the mental challenges of successive loan spells at Molineaux where ‘I stayed too long and lost a couple of years.’
Before his belated first team break at Ross County this season, though, he never considered packing his gloves in his old kit bag and heading home to Drumlin Country.
‘When you make the commitment to go to England or Scotland at a young age, it’s almost as if you are giving up if you come home at 26 or 27 so it was never an option for me, I was always going to keep going,’ he said.
‘I am very strong minded, I am a fighter, you can’t knock me down. I have been knocked down plenty of times, but I have come back stronger to go again, to prove myself, and to prove the doubters wrong.’
He joked yesterday that for a fellow who was in the Monaghan first team at 17, he hasn’t ‘weathered too well’ but he has a rugged resistance about him which is admirable. He is also a realist and accepts his elevation to the senior squad only came about because ‘other people are not available.’
Yet, there is no reason why he can’t show enough to Martin O’Neill, and specifically goalkeeping coach Seamus McDonagh, that he can be relied upon, if needed.
‘I have never really had a good run [of games] until this season and the [Ireland] manager has shown that he only picks players who are playing regularly.
‘I see this as an opportunity to come in and get into the manager’s thoughts, to show him what I am capable of.
‘Darren Randolph has made the jersey his own for the last three or four years and he has been superb. There is a lot of competition outside of Darren but you have to aspire to be those guys or there’s no point in being involved.’
McCarey has one call-up on his CV, when Giovanni Trapattoni brought him to New York for a game against Spain in the Yankee Stadium in 2013 but knows a lot of the Irish players from his time with the U19s.
‘We had a right good team then, it’s good to see the likes of Derrick Williams and Matt Doherty progress to the senior squad now, it’s a good confidence booster for me.’
Similarly his run of games with Ross County.
‘I went to Ross County to play. That was a conscious decision. It didn’t work out that way last season but since Owen Coyle came and then Stuart Kettlewell, I have had a good run in the team; it’s good to get your face out there.
‘The focus for me this week is to impress, go back and help the club stay in the league.’
McCarey has been kept busy as Ross County are propping up the Scottish Premiership and seem set for relegation.
‘It’s been a struggle this year, we are on our third manager of the season and that tells its own story. We have been far too inconsistent, myself included,’ he admitted.
‘The way the league splits you have five games against the bottom five teams, so we still have a fighting chance.’
His season was rocked by the early passing over Christmas of Sean McCaffrey, one of his major career influences, and a highly regarded former manager of Irish under-age teams.
‘I happened to be home at the time, it was the mid-season break in Scotland,’ he recalled with visible emotion. Sean was a fantastic mentor for me. He was a wonderful character, his own man, a brilliant person, and he would do anything for the lads.
‘A lot of the players here would have worked under Sean and I don’t think I ever heard a player say a bad word about him and that showed at his funeral. It was a privilege to be there.’
It would enhance McCaffrey’s legacy if McCarey got to cross the white line tomorrow night. He has served a long and as demanding an apprenticeship as any.