More than five years ago, Shane Long, Kevin Doyle and Stephen Hunt had a fine Christmas dinner together at Long’s apartment in Reading. Doyle and Hunt’s girlfriends had returned to Ireland for the festive season and Long was a still a teenager living with his mother, Ann, who had cooked and presented the dinner. Since then, Doyle and Hunt have gone and decamped to Wolves and got married, while Long has started his own family and moved to West Bromwich Albion. Long’s stock is a lot higher now in club football, but at international level things move at a different pace. Nonetheless, Long is still breathing down Doyle’s neck to get him out of the starting line-up, only this time harder than ever.
“I think Robbie [Keane] and Kevin are going to be first choice at the moment, but anything can happen,” Long said on Tuesday after scoring the seventh goal of his 25-cap international career in the 1-0 defeat of Bosnia & Herzegovina last Saturday, in which he again made a big impact coming off the bench. “You’ve got to make sure that if you’re not first or second on the pitch, you’re third or fourth or fifth. You’ve got to earn your place on the team. I feel like I’m playing well and doing just that.”
Doyle, who’s 28, and Long, 25, room together when on Ireland duty and were side by side on the training ground in Tuscany on Thursday when it was put to the more senior of them that the best of buddies were now becoming the best of rivals, a notion Doyle tried to play down.
“You shouldn’t leave out Jonny Walters as well who has been knocking on everybody’s shoulder,” Doyle said. “It is harsh to overlook Jonny Walters and [Simon] Cox. There are five of us.”
Nonetheless it is Long who threatens most strongly to break the forward partnership of Doyle and Keane which has survived intact since first being put together by Giovanni Trapattoni’s predecessor, Steve Staunton. In the important qualifier against Slovakia last September at the Aviva, Long was picked ahead of Doyle before picking up an injury in the run-up to the game which allowed Doyle back in.
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Trapattoni at the time had doubts about a knee injury Doyle was carrying, justifiably it turned out even though the player and his club manager at the time, Mick McCarthy, denied there was a problem.
While Doyle has since managed to shake off the problem, there is the sense that Trapattoni would quickly change things should his performance levels dip for Ireland the way they did for his club last season.
Either way, Doyle and Long are both sure to see plenty of action over the next two weeks and watching their progress with a certain amount of proprietorial interest will be the Reading manager and Ireland fan, Brian McDermott.
McDermott scouted the two players when they were at Cork City back in 2005 and Reading have been reaping the benefits ever since. They came for a combined total of about £130,000, Doyle the more expensive at £90,000 with add-ons, Long thrown in seemingly as an afterthought for £30,000.
“He was maybe raw in the tactical side of things but not raw when it came to skills and football ability,” is how Doyle remembers Long the teenager. “He is definitely his own fella. I don’t know whether he has watched me at all, or in what way, but we have always been in and around each other.”
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Initially, Long stayed at McDermott’s house, chipping in by washing the dishes and doing a spot of babysitting. Any impression that Long came to keep Doyle company has long been disproved, though Long still takes umbrage at the idea.
“I wasn’t going as a mate. I was going as a footballer. They came to look at Kevin in a friendly. I played a half as well and they were interested in what I had to offer. It was a no-lose situation for them and luckily it paid off for me.
“I was very much the understudy then. Kevin was playing right wing when I went to Cork, then he went upfront and I was still learning my game. I went to Reading with him and it was more of the same. He went on to bigger and better things and it opened up the chance for me to develop into a first-team striker.”
Sold on by Reading for a combined total of about £11m, Long appears to have made the wiser choice in moving to West Brom, though there is uncertainty at both clubs since they have each lost their managers in the last four months. On moving at the beginning of the season, Long made a blistering start to his West Brom career but his season was badly interrupted by injury. Doyle also had to spend plenty of time on the treatment table and ended up suffering the second relegation of his career, having gone down previously with Reading. Doyle’s confidence took a hit, but Long believes some of the criticisms his friend received was unjustified.
“It’s a team thing. We approached games with a different mindset to Wolves,” Long says. “That showed on the pitch when we played against teams like Chelsea. We went out to win them and created more chances and I managed to get a few goals.”
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As well as rooming together for Ireland, Long and Doyle live a few hundred yards from each other now that they are both playing in the West Midlands. “We know that when we come into the squad we’re going to be fighting for the same position.
“And we know that whoever plays will have the other person’s full support and that’s been the case when I’ve got the nod and vice versa. For us, it’s all about winning the next game and we’ve all been brought up in the same mentality. When he plays, I want him to score goals and win the game for us and I’m sure he feels the same way.”
Should they both get on the scoresheet in Poland, Ireland might have plenty to shout about.