FORMER MON MOVES TO ST JOHNSTONE

Monaghan United juvenile Mark Connolly has swapped the English Premiership for the Scottish Premiership as he took up a loan stint with St Johnstone.  It was seen as a great opportunity for the young Clones lad to get some valuable first team experience to heighten his chances of making it big with Bolton in the future. 

Connolly left Monaghan United FC and moved to Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2008 and in the summer of 2009 made the move to Bolton.  He has impressed at Bolton in their reserves team and it was felt that in order to be able to break through to the First team, he needed some to get some extra experience and so the loan move to St Johstone came about.

Monaghan United FC wish Mark all the best in Scotland and are sure that he will make the most of this opportunity. 

 

INTERVIEW WITH AARON McCAREY ON WOLVES WEBSITE HERE

 

Safe hands and eyes on the prize…Aaron strives to be big fish in big pond by Peter Hughes

 

 When I think of my father, I think of him as a fly-fisherman.

 

 My sharpest memory of him is seated at the table in our big front room, his workman's hands surprisingly dexterous as he went about the delicate task of tying flies.

 

 And when I imagine him, it's usually as a fisherman too, riverwater lapping against his waders as he practices his patient art, the swish swish swish of his cast singing out in the hope rather than the expectation of ensnaring something gleaming and special.

 

 I grew up to be a journalist of sorts. Don't know what he would have made of that. But I feel a kinship with him when it comes to the interview, an art of which I imagine I am a considerably less adept practitioner than he was of his.

 

 Interviewing is the newspaperman's fishing expedition, mostly carried out in less than ideal conditions when it comes to time and opportunity. Into what is more often than not a resistant wind, you cast out questions in the hope of reeling in something of value, something with which to refine the coarse weave of cliché into more upmarket material.

 

 Mostly the catch is modest. But occasionally you land a beauty.

 

 Speaking to Monaghan United Chairman Jim McGlone and the club's much talked about young goalkeeper Aaron McCarey last Friday, I got lucky.

 

 It wasn't some piece of incisive interrogation on my part. A conversational opportunity opened up and Aaron took it, like he would a cross arrowing out of the floodlight glare into the six-yard box.

 

 Leaning forward, he said: "You need to set goals for yourself, or you will not succeed, or achieve." 

 

 The words counted less than the quietly emphatic way they were expressed. For the expanse of the sentence the becoming diffidence of the likeable 17-year-old dropped away and you glimpsed the Tungsten steel gleam that caught the eye of English Premiership newcomers Wolverhampton Wanderers and has made every knowledgeable judge I have spoken to in recent months predict great things for the young Monaghan man.

 

 For someone making an epic journey in a breathtakingly short space of time, Aaron's feet appear mostly firmly fixed on terra firma. He had spent the early part of the week having his first substantial taste of the training facilities at Molineaux - he has signed a pre-contract agreement with Mick McCarthy's club and will formally become a Wolves player on a professional contract in the January transfer window - and after we spoke he was off on his travels again - first to the RSC where he was to keep another clean sheet in United's impressive 2-0 vanquishing of First Division promotion aspirants Waterford United, and then to the more exotic setting of Turkey as part of Sean McCaffrey's Republic of Ireland U-18 squad.

 

 The weekly commute from the Wolves' lair to Kingspan Century Park will continue until the Irish season's end, an arrangement that suits both parties - the English club content to see their new recruit continue his ascendant learning curve in the "grown up" Irish game, and the Mons pleased to have their goalkeeper's gifts, refined by Premiership coaching, at their disposal as they round off a very pleasing season to which McCarey has contributed in no small measure since breaking into the first team at the midpoint of the campaign.

 

 Why Wolves? seemed a good starting point; it was well known the hunting pack was a large one. Aaron's response was refreshingly free of any evidence of being beguiled by glamour: "They are a warm, welcoming club, and they make you feel at home. They have a big Irish contingent, and the Irish boys all look out for one another."

 

 Aaron will be part of the Wanderers' development squad, working under goalkeeping coach Pat Mountain, but it is apparent that he is not stepping into some never-never land separated by a glass ceiling from the prospect of first-team football.

 

 As Jim McGlone made patent: "There is a clear opportunity there for Aaron. The position he will occupy at Wolves is effectively fourth choice 'keeper. If he develops as I think he will, there is a chance for him to step up the hierarchy and make a bit for the No.3 spot, then the No.2, and so on."

 

 "From January I will be involved with the Wolves reserves," Aaron pointed out. "My first objectives are to try to get a few reserve team games under my belt, and get involved with the squad that contests the FA Youth Cup."

 

 Later, he added: "I want to get into the first team, but I know that can't just happen. It will take a lot of hard work, as will a future in international football, but that is a goal I hope to achieve as well."

 

 Delight and pride vie for the foreground in the Monaghan United Chairman's contribution to the discussion. Aaron is the second United player within 12 months to be snapped up by Wolves, his predecessor Mark Connolly being currently involved in a move to Bolton Wanderers.

 

 "The people at Wolves have declared themselves very impressed with our set-up," Jim told me. "To get two players through to the English ranks so quickly has prompted them to explore the possibility of developing an association with us because they see the potential inherent in our youth structures."

 

 Other clubs across the water are also interested in pursuing an alliance with Monaghan United, something which Jim regards as a powerful endorsement of the major investment in resources the club have devoted to establishing a pathway through the youngest playing levels right up to their first team.

 

 The Chairman's ambition is to see the establishment of a Youth Academy at the Kingspan Century Park complex that would form a magnet to attract young players from throughout the country eager to nurture their nascent talents, "not necessarily with a view to signing with the club but in order to avail of top-level coaching."

 

 Aaron is proof positive that the Monaghan United pathway is a negotiable one. He attributed his breakthrough to the first team as crucial to his goalkeeping maturation: "Playing adult football brings you on in leaps and bounds. It is a big step-up, much faster and more physical."

 

 Aaron endorsed Jim McGlone's view that the coaching received from established No.1 Brendan Kennedy in the early part of the season had contributed a great deal to the assurance shown by him when he became the vastly experienced custodian's eventual successor.

 

 And it is that assurance that promotes Aaron out of the standard "very good" or "very promising" categories that players of his years usually occupy, and into a more elite designation.

 

 Most goalkeepers who make the grade in the Irish senior game are good, instinctual shotstoppers, the characteristic that catches the eye when you first cast it in the direction of the man between the posts. Hold you gaze on them over the stretch of a season, however, and you usually spot what has inhibited further progress, little chinks in concentration, or judgement, or plain old self-assertion.

 

 Very often the surest barometer of a goalkeeper's quality is the confidence projected by the defenders for whom he is the policeman and the court of final appeal. 

 

 For me the most remarkable feature of Aaron McCarey's first-team run with Monaghan United has been the ease with his presence behind them that the back four have cultivated.

 

 My enthusiastic but relatively untrained eye tells me he is an outstanding goalkeeping prospect, an assessment which has appreciated in value each time it has been endorsed by the succession of seasoned journalists and football observers who have enjoyed his performances alongside me in the Monaghan United pressbox over recent months.

 

 Is he the finished article? Hardly. Who is at 17? But the occasional impetuosity will be tempered by experience, some of it hard no doubt, at a higher and less forgiving level. And the coltish physique will be moulded, hardened and refined by the formidable expertise of a modern Premiership club willing to devote its considerable resources to nurturing his substantial potential through painstaking attention to training, diet and psychological fine-tuning.

 

 A glorious chance beckons, but the leave-taking is not without its pangs. 

 

 Aaron is obviously very much at home in the Monaghan United set-up, thanking with feeling "everyone at the club for all they have done for me since I have been here, especially Jim for all his hard work, and Mick [United first team boss Mick Cooke] for giving me the opportunity to play in the first team." 

 

 He also paid tribute to international manager Sean McCaffrey: "Sean always gives you a chance. He is great with young players and he has given me very good advice on what they look for in the English game."

 

 Jim McGlone acknowledged that the young 'keeper "will be leaving behind a lot of people, family members and friends as well as all the people at the club who think so highly of him." But he's convinced that for Aaron the right time has come. 

 

 "I honestly believe that there is a right time to take this step, and this is the time for Aaron. Trying to make the grade in England is tough, but this is something that Aaron has always wanted to do. When you get an opportunity like this you have to take it. Aaron has been at the club for seven or eight years now, and I've always seen him step up to a challenge.

 

 "I have no doubt that Aaron will make the grade. He is not just going on a trip - I see him being a first-team 'keeper in the English professional game." 

 

I intended to end this piece with an exaggerated flourish, closing the circle back to where we came in. I was going to try to shill you into thinking that goalkeeping and fly-fishing sit in close relation in the grand scheme of things.

 

 But they don't, really. The patience required is comparable, the discipline, that Tungsten steel shine in the eye that gives away their master craftsmen. But their governing objectives are, ultimately, antithetical.

 

 So I'll finish with this simple wish: Empty nets, Aaron. And plenty of 'em!