Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MAXIE SWAIN
KYLE MCVEY says he has unfinished business in top flight football despite his decision to join Niall Currie’s Portadown revolution over the summer.
The 31-year-old defender, described as a “warrior” by his new boss, is excited by the challenge of restoring the fallen Ports to former glories, and is adamant his switch to the Blufin Sport Championship in no way signals diminishing ambitions on his part, much less the winding down of his 14-year career.
Instead, Mcvey reckons his move was a no-brainer after being left a little underwhelmed by the offer on the table at Carrick where he played on loan last season.
Certainly, the Shamrock Park outfit are widely expected to resume Danske Bank Premiership duties at the earliest opportunity; in Currie they have the Championship’s most decorated manager while Portadown remain, for all their troubles, one of the biggest and most successful sides in the country.
To put it bluntly it’s unthinkable that the Mid-ulster men’s exile will be anything other than temporary, and that’s exactly how Mcvey wants things to pan out.
“I had no intention of dropping down to the Championship, but now that I have, I have no intention of staying down there either,” said Mcvey.
“At the end of the season I went down and spoke to Niall. We spoke for 10 or 15 minutes max and everything he said – he said about getting the club back in the Premiership, he told me about the players he was bringing in, the whole professionalism around the club – and everything he said, it just ticked every box.
“They are a big club and I knew as soon as I spoke to him and even before I left, I knew it felt right.
“And in my mind I definitely feel I have made the right move.
“We had a good pre-season and I’m really enjoying it again, hopefully now we can push on and I can’t see any reason why we can’t go straight back up.
“That’s our aim and that’s my aim when I joined Portadown, to get the club straight back up again.”
Once one of the most soughtafter defenders in the Irish League after his breakthrough more than a decade ago as a teak-tough centre-back at Coleraine, Mcvey is used to the razzmatazz and commotion of Northern Ireland’s top league, having played there since he was a teenager.
So naturally he wants to return there, but he’s long enough in the tooth to know the Ports will need to spill some blood to earn their Premiership redemption.
They are a huge scalp at Championship level and dropped points at PSNI last week only served as a reminder that no one will be rolling over for them.
“I always knew that the Championship was a hard league to play in and it was proved there last Saturday (against PSNI).
“No team is going to stand there and let us run over the top of them. We have to earn the right to win games.
“If players’ attitudes are not right we are going to find it hard,” he said. “But with the players the manager has brought in, and with the talent we have, I can’t see why we can’t go straight back up – I’m looking forward to the challenge of helping us do it.”
Looking back over his career, Mcvey’s proudest achievements were also his biggest regrets.
As a Coleraine lad born and bred, he was honoured to help guide them into two finals inside two years, even if the experiences were bittersweet with the Bannsiders ultimately undone by Belfast’s Big Two. “Getting to the Irish Cup final in 2008 with Coleraine, and then the League Cup in 2010 against Glentoran, even though we got beat, they were my proudest moments,” said Mcvey.
“Living in Coleraine, to go from the Colts to the first team and to play in a final for your hometown team was an honour, it’s just a pity we couldn’t go a step further and win it.”
As the bedrock of that Coleraine team of the late Noughties, there was always a lingering sense that he might one day outgrow his local club, and so it proved in 2013 with Mcvey finally transferring to Linfield after years of speculation.
But like in many walks of life, timing is everything in football, and his was unfortunate with Mcvey joining the Blues just as David Jeffrey’s reign was ambling to a close.
He soon found himself surplus to requirements under Warren Feeney, precipitating a move to Ballymena where he stayed for a few years, playing under Glenn Ferguson and then Jeffrey again before moving on loan to Carrick last season. “I had a chance to join Linfield in 2008 and I turned them down so when they came back, I thought there’s no way
I’m turning them down this time,” explained Mcvey.
“So I went there and in fairness I might have stayed longer, but with big Davy going, Warren Feeney took over and it didn’t work out.
“So I went to Ballymena under Spike