IRELAND CALL-UP A LONG TIME IN THE MAKING
Better late than never, Kevin
IT was a week to remember for Kevin Long but to call it a whirlwind would be misleading. Unlike, say, Declan Rice who made his Premier League debut and landed an Irish call-up in the space of 48-hours, Long’s journey has been seven years in the making. Back then, he was a gangly teenager cutting his teeth in a Cork City side that was about to go bust under the ownership of Tom Coughlan. Amid interest from England at the time, Long (inset), 26, recalls Stephen O’donnell “screaming at me in the shower ‘would I ever leave’.” It was tongue-in-cheek stuff of course, but the club was broke and players weren’t getting paid so team-mates were forgiven for seeing Euro signs over his head. “I was just a young lad coming through, happy to play football so everything was going over my head,” he said ahead of today’s flight to America for Thursday’s clash with Mexico. “Everything happened so fast. I just broke into the Cork City team and literally within a few months I had signed for a Premier League club.” He made 15 appearances for the Rebels before Burnley beat off Everton and Celtic, but first he was sent on loan to Accrington Stanley and Portsmouth. His Clarets breakthrough came during the 2012/13 Championship campaign but his Premier League debut in January 2015 against Newcastle ended in disaster. Just 20 minutes after coming on as a first-half sub, he did his cruciate and didn’t appear again for 11 months when surfacing on loan at Barnsley. “I had to go on loan for the first two or three years to get used to things over there and settle in. Every one of my loan spells helped me out,” said Long. But he remained in Sean Dyche’s plans at Burnley and started the last three games of this Premier League season against West Brom, Bournemouth and West Ham. Martin O’neill’s call-up for last week’s training camp in Cork capped off an exciting month – even though he will miss his brother’s wedding as he chases a first cap. Long said: “It’s been a bit of a shock. I haven’t been playing a lot of games so to get a few games in the Premier League and get a call up for your country, it’s massive. “My brother, Daniel, was happy I got called up. He got an amateur cap when he was with Avondale and always held that against me. “So if I get a cap for the proper team I think I can shove that on him! I don’t mind missing the wedding and I don’t think he’ll mind either.” Of the prospect of winning a first cap, Long said: “It would be brilliant, every player wants to play for his country.”