IT WAS six years ago when Keith Andrews’ abilities with a football first brought him to the nation’s attention. He was 28, 11 years a pro, but unknown.
His career had started so brightly – captaining Wolves at 20 – before disappearing down blind alley after blind alley. Yet he remembers those lost years fondly. He got married and got wise.
If a manager didn’t fancy him, he’d move – having learned the hard way how loyalty is a quaint concept in today’s game and that if you want to get on then you have to get busy. On the Andrews policy list, only one team merited his loyalty – the Ireland one.
They didn’t call, though. Mick McCarthy, Brian Kerr and Steve Staunton – between them – capped a couple of dozen different midfielders. Andrews? Not for them.
So it is with a touch of irony that the man who would finally give him his chance was the laziest of them all.
“People can say what they like about Trapattoni,” says Andrews now, “but there isn’t a bad word that I could utter. We all know his communication wasn’t his strongest point. There was no conversation between us at all when I got dropped.
“At that stage, I wasn’t playing at my peak and lost out. But look, I had no divine right to be in a squad. You’ve got to earn it. Managers have the right to freshen things up.”
So he is back to where he was between the ages of 20 and 28, waiting on the phone to ring.
“I have not retired and will never retire once there is an opportunity to play for my country. I will jump at the chance to represent Ireland again but if you’re not getting picked there’s not a lot you can do about it. That said, I certainly won’t be coming out and saying I’m retiring. There is no chance of that happening.
“I’m not one of those people who says, ‘I’ll think about it after the summer’ or 'I’m not ready for this game yet’. I won’t come out with that type of crap.”
Stephen Ireland wouldn’t think twice about going down this route, though. And it hardly takes a genius to figure out that Andrews wouldn’t think too highly of the Cobh-man’s attitude. Nor did Darron Gibson’s year-long sabbatical/huff from international football leave much of an impression.
“As a kid I was an Irish fan,” he said. “I went with my uncle to the World Cup in 1994. That was where I dreamed of going as a player, too.”
He wasn’t the only kid harbouring those dreams. In the Dublin and District Schoolboy League, the mid 1990s was a golden era, filled with players like Andrews, Stephen McPhail, Damien Duff, Richard Dunne and a scrawny, little kid from Tallaght called Robbie Keane.
He and Keane were spotted by the same scout, Eddie Corcoran, and brought to Wolves, Keane impressing with his outrageous self-confidence, Andrews with his endless work ethic, his enthusiasm, the fact he’d always head down to the shops with a ball down at his feet, the fact he was always the first there and the last away from training, the fact he’d get home from school and head straight to the local green, then home for dinner and the dreams.
He wasn’t overly interested in school, or GAA or anything other than becoming a professional. But where Keane was cocky, Andrews doubted himself. Yes, he was good – but was he good enough?
He knew Keane was and knew that from the moment he scored twice on his Wolves debut as a 17-year-old. And before Andrews was established in the side, Keane was on his way, bought for £6million by Coventry.
But seeing his friend make it broke down a mental barrier. If one scrawny kid from Dublin could hack it in this country then what was stopping him?
The answer was circumstances. Wolves changed manager and the new guy, Dave Jones, didn’t fancy him. So he went on loan, to Oxford, then Stoke, then Walsall. By 2005, he was still on Wolves’ books but really he was already part of their past.
Giovanni Trapattoni was the manager who finally gave Andrews a chance“But I never stopped hoping,” he says.
And with good reason. He went to Hull on a free transfer before Paul Ince brought him to MK Dons, a club with no tradition but with a bit of ambition.
“I’ll always be grateful to them because they turned my career around,” he says.
In truth, though, he turned it round himself. The things he was supposedly weak at – passing, scoring – were worked on and in two years at Milton Keynes he scored 21 goals before joining Ince at Blackburn Rovers. And that is where finally, at 28, he got spotted.
“I can laugh when people talk about Ireland’s recent games against Turkey, Costa Rica, Portugal and Italy being meaningless,” says Andrews “because so much can come out of these friendlies.
"For me, it was the B international against Nottingham Forest at Dalymount Park in 2008. I went on from that. A lot was made of the fact the players had to keep playing until June 10. So what? You will have a lot of time to go on holidays when you retire, or get older.
"It was an opportunity for players to really stamp their claim, to grab the game by the scruff of the neck. Wes [Hoolohan] grasped his opportunity and has been a shining example of what can be done.”
He would have loved to have been with them but instead he was in a television studio, assessing the performances, all the while knowing his time has probably run its course. And yet he won’t give up.
“I don’t know what the manager is thinking because I have not spoken to him,” he says. “But do I still think I could fill a role in the team? Yes, I do, certainly.
“But I also understand he has a couple of midfielders that look cemented in his plans? He has got Darron Gibson coming back, Paul Green, Jeff Hendrick and Glenn Whelan. I still feel I have something to offer, though even if I know these things don’t go on for ever.
“As things stand, I am not there because I have not been picked which is the manager’s prerogative. Listen, I certainly won’t be coming out and saying that I’m retiring, no chance.
“I don’t know what the manager’s thinking is. I’ve not spoken to him. At the age I’m at, I’ll be 34 in September. I feel I could add to the squad certainly but if it is not to be, it is not to be.
“If it is in the past – and I certainly hope it isn’t – I will reflect on what I have done fondly. I’d like to think I grasped that with both hands. Effort and commitment-wise, I felt I could hold my head up high as I gave every ounce that I had to give. To play for my country, it was a privilege.”
Some nights stick out – the travesty of Paris when Thierry Henry killed a ball (and a dream) with his hand, the glory of Tallinn when qualification for the Euros was effectively secured and, of course, the singing in the rain in Gdansk when Spain trounced Ireland 4-0 but the band played on as the ship went down.
And amid all that is a personal memory from Liege in 2011, when Ireland beat Italy 2-0 in a friendly. “The night before they arrived in these really smart suits whereas we got to the training ground in our scruffy tracksuits. We looked across at each other and knew we were the unlikely lads, yet we went and won 2-0 the next night. There were great times.”
And he hopes there will be more – even if, deep down, he knows there won’t be.
