Expect a spike of local interest and a flock of brand new followers for Ipswich Town FC as they play their way through the FA Cup over the next few months.
I met Georgie O’Callaghan on Saturday evening and he told me his protege, Shane McLoughlin is edging ever closer to a starting place on the ‘Town team’ over there.
Shane, who signed a professional contract with the cross-channel club last summer, is on the verge of making the big breakthrough this season – according to his boyhood coach and friend.
Guiding Hand
The now 19 year old is under the guiding hand of former Irish defender, captain and manager, Mick McCarthy.
“I’m fairly sure that Shane will make his first team debut soon. He has shown them what he can do all the way up along since he went over there only a few years ago.
If the gifted, young professional does make it onto the Ipswich Town FA Cup team this season it will be a fitting reward for the dedication and work he has put into sharpening the skills that are now taking him to these great heights.
I remember well the day Currow’s Moss Keane made his international rugby debut away back in the early 1970s.
Bursting With Anticipation
Joe McCarthy’s Bar was bursting with anticipation and packed with people – some of whom just about knew that the ball they’d be kicking would be a different shape.
But they downed tools on a busy Saturday afternoon and they were there to pay their own kind of tribute to a local lad who had made it up onto another plane altogether.
Mick Galwey, in his time, was accorded the same kind of unspoken reverence – as were the Doyles – Mick and Tom before them.
Years of Dedication
Shane’s big day, whenever it comes, will also be as big an occasion for the one and only Georgie. It will be a live, living, history in the making kind of monument to the years of dedication he has devoted to the club he helped found back in 1973 in Gerald Wren’s field off the Killarney Road.
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