Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MAXIE SWAIN Talks t End o left Pa but he’ for his help resurr
A JOB as an inspirational speaker beckons for Paddy Mcnally when his football days are over.
In fact, maybe the Irish FA should hire him now, as a kind of liaison officer in charge of salvaging the careers of young, crestfallen footballers who have been jettisoned by their clubs in England and Scotland and return home nursing fragile egos and broken dreams.
The 25-year-old centre back, in perhaps the best form of his career as Portadown look to finally end their long exile from the big time, doesn’t miss and hit the wall when he picks apart the fluctuating fortunes of football and the situation facing youngsters here.
His big gripe is with wasted talent. He hates to see it, and he should know, having come so perilously close to walking away from football himself after his own three-year stay at his beloved Celtic (circled) came to an end. Mcnally, the way he talks about the game, the way he plays it, his passion is infectious.
Last Friday night, as the Ports trailed Newry on their travels at the Showgrounds, there he was, ripping off his protective face mask like some kind of modern day Braveheart, rolling his sleeves up and taking the fight to the hosts.
He simply refused to roll over, refused to accept defeat – and in the end two second half goals from
Adam Salley and an outrageous beast of a save from Bobby Edwards secured a comeback win for the visitors.
This is the kind of passion that those young players who end up lost to the game could feel, these are the kind of nights they could enjoy, if only they could see the bigger picture.
As Mcnally says, there is a career here for you. Granted it’s not the goldplated, millionaire’s paradise you thought you were promised, but it’s been good enough for some of the best players this country has produced – and it’s only getting better.
This is clearly something close to his heart and if his words are a call to arms for any youngster struggling with the game, they are also, in a way, addressed to his younger self too.
And the message is simply this:
Never give up.
“When I came back I played in the
Irish League and knocked about a few different clubs, but that’s when I wasn’t enjoying my football, my head wasn’t right,” said Mcnally, who joined Glenavon on his return here, before moving on to Ballymena United and then Larne.
“You felt like you were this failure, you didn’t achieve your dream, and you take it out on everyone else.
“You have a lot to learn but you quickly realise that you have to knuckle down and go, ‘Do you know what, I still have an opportunity here and I can make a career’.
“The standard is only getting better and better and thankfully for me, when I got to about 23, 24, I started finding myself as a player and it’s worked out great for me ever since then. “But I think you have to go through that adversity to come out the other end. No football career is straight and narrow is it, there are always ups and downs and mine is no different.
“But to be honest, I probably wouldn’t change anything because it’s made me the player and the person I am. There are lads who go over and it doesn’t work out for them but this league is getting better and better and there’s a career here for you.
“So many lads throw the head up… I could have done it so easily, I thought about it, don’t get me wrong, I thought, ‘Is this really worth it?’
“But it’s all that we know, it’s playing football and competing for trophies, you’ll never get that in any other walk of life.”
Referencing his close friend Gavin Whyte, who rose through the ranks at Crusaders before he was snapped up by Oxford United, Mcnally believes players are now better off serving an apprenticeship in the Irish League, where you learn quickly that there are real consequences to your performances and your behaviour, that people can get sacked and fans can turn on you, is preferable to moving to the academies across the water, where players are pampered and cosseted from those realities to a certain extent.
As a teenager himself, Mcnally was back and forth to various clubs in England, including Leicester and Stoke, before finally receiving his first concrete offer from Hull.
But it would be up north in Glasgow where he would learn his trade after Celtic’s head of youth Chris
Mccart spotted him playing for Northern Ireland against Slovakia, having travelled over to keep tabs on boy wonder Paul George, who Mcnally describes as “the best player I ever played with, absolutely exceptional, a player destined to play for Celtic’s first team”.
“I was back and forth, back and forth, and it was a big culture shock for me, getting on a plane by myself at 14 and going over to Manchester,” he said.
“It was a brilliant learning curve for me, it made you stand up and grow up at such a young age.
“But I say this to young lads now,