Emmet Malone talks to Wigan and Republic of Ireland midfielder Graham Kavanagh on the long journey back to Premiership action
Concerns that top-flight football may have come just a little too soon for Wigan Athletic are hardly dispelled on first arriving at the club's Christopher Park training ground just outside the town. The foundations for new offices and meeting-room space have been laid but the project remains at ground level with building work yet to get properly under way - a handy metaphor perhaps for manager Paul Jewell's ongoing attempt to fashion a team capable of surviving in the Premiership.
Even amongst the local population, most of whom either grew up supporting bigger clubs in nearby Liverpool and Manchester, or were simply preoccupied with rugby league, there seems to be as much scepticism as excitement about the coming season. As he sits in the dressingroom-cum-storage space cum-club community liaison office, Irish midfielder Graham Kavanagh admits some of the locals have a bit of catching up to do after what has been the almost whirlwind success Wigan have enjoyed in recent years.
Things are progressing well, he insists however, with a club that only entered the league 27 years ago and had an average attendance of just 1,200 in 1996 selling more than 10 times that number of season tickets over the past few weeks.
Friendly and relaxed, the 31-year-old Dubliner is unsure as we speak as to whether he will make tomorrow's opening game against Chelsea (or Wednesday's international against Italy) because of a foot injury but having waited nine years after his last outing for Middlesbrough to play in the Premiership again, he knows at least that his return is only a matter of time.
Kavanagh's career since has been divided between Stoke and Cardiff. At both clubs he was an immensely popular player and team captain but the ways in which he moved on could hardly have been more different. The Irishman announced that he needed to leave Stoke in order to progress his career only to anger supporters by joining a club then lower in the table after being persuaded by Sam Hamann that the Welsh club was going places. The former Wimbledon chairman then sold him on when the money ran out.
A firm believer in fate, though, Kavanagh has few complaints about the way things have turned out. He was, after all, reunited with his now wife (Rosemary, a sister of former international Liam O'Brien) years after they had initially broken up around the time he moved to England when, over the course of one evening, they went from reminiscing about old times to planning a future together.
"In the space of a few hours," he recalls, still clearly marvelling at it all, "we realised that we just fit together like a hand and glove."
Some things are simply meant to be, he insists, and the temporary loss of control over his club career, he observes happily, has turned out for the best even if he had reached the point where he anticipated settling permanently in Cardiff.
All of that changed when, five months ago, he was in a "fun factory" with his children, Megan (five) and Calum (one), and he got a call from manager Lennie Lawrence to say that he had been sold in order to meet the financially troubled club's wage bill for that month.
"I was thinking, 'Jesus Christ' a couple of weeks earlier I'd been thinking to myself I'll get my (coaching) badges and we could all be here long term," he recalls. "Well, in the space of a 10-minute conversation that was all gone . . . I was told to take it or leave it but if I didn't take it then the club could go into administration."
The club he had been sold to was Wigan and when, two days later, the club told him not to bother driving up for his medical as they would send a helicopter for him instead, he began to realise there might at least be an upside to his misfortune.
"Yeah, it was proper Footballers' Wives stuff," he laughs. "Anyway that was it. It was all done and dusted in half an hour. Suddenly I was playing for a team that was potentially only 10 or 12 games away from being in the Premiership."
When Kavanagh went back to Cardiff with Wigan a few weeks later he was given a hugely emotional welcome by the club's supporters who understood that his departure had been forced upon him.
"It was very different to going back to Stoke," he recalls. "God, that was desperate stuff. I'd have to say that anyone who says it doesn't hurt them is either lying or they've got, well, brass balls. It wasn't even abuse, it was proper, proper hatred. I mean, getting off the coach there was some fella who pulled his finger across his throat as if he was going to kill me and I thought, Jesus, the game hasn't even kicked off yet."
There was considerable joy in Stoke subsequently that the move did not quite work out as planned for him but he still views it as having been a crucial stepping stone not least, he says, because the advice of Lawrence helped him to resurrect his international career.
"He was a huge influence on me during my time there and a couple of years ago I had what I thought at the time was a peculiar conversation with him where he more or less said the more I scored goals (he regularly reached double figures from central midfield) the less likelihood there was of getting back into the Irish squad.
"Obviously I didn't understand this at all but basically what he was trying to say was I was concentrating on getting forward and getting goals rather than my all-round midfield play. After thinking about it I realised he was right and I very consciously changed the way I played."
Sure enough, the next season there were less goals but more rounded performances and after years in the international wilderness Brian Kerr brought him back into the Republic of Ireland squad.
Jewell has said in pre-season he'd like a bit more of the old Kavanagh back as Wigan are going to need every goal they can get during the months ahead. The midfielder, grateful for the overdue opportunity to mix again at a level he has always believed (without seeming remotely arrogant about it) he was cut out for, says he will do his best to oblige but that it will be a question of striking a new balance.
Over the years there were missed opportunities to go to bigger clubs but Kavanagh insists now there are no regrets, he was meant to end up at Wigan where life should be good both for him for his family.
The team, he insists, can survive which would be the first part in what he says is his two-part dream scenario for the year head. Wigan avoiding relegation and Ireland qualifying for the World Cup is the full wish list. "I'm not asking for much, eh," he laughs.
The 2-2 draw against Israel in June, in which Kerr's decision to bring him on for the injured Robbie Keane became the main talking point, has made qualification more difficult but Kavanagh believes much of the criticism that followed that game was unduly harsh and that, in any case, the Republic can still make it to next summer's finals.
"I know people say Brian should have gone for a like-for-like when Robbie was struggling but I thought there was a good chance that it would be me that got on because Stephen Elliott hadn't played a competitive game at that level and Gary Doherty hadn't played much football for a while beforehand. I don't think the shape changed either and to be fair we battered them in the second half but we still conceded two sloppy goals, so we took some stick and while I actually thought I played quite well I took quite a lot of it."
Despite the setback he believes that as a Premiership player his claim to "the second place in midfield", will carry that much more weight than before and he is slightly angrily dismissive of the suggestion that his opportunities will be generally limited to those occasions when Roy Keane is not available. At club level his new-found status will bring other benefits too, he says. "At the very least it's probably added a couple of years to my career," he says. "Even if the worst happened, we didn't stay up or I was released at the end of my contract in a couple of years I'd still be thought of as a Premiership player and that's very different to being thought of as a second division player in terms of the opportunities that are likely to come your way."
The plan, such as there is one, is to play on "well beyond 35" and then go into coaching. Experience has thought him, however, not to count his chickens.
"A couple of years ago when I hurt my ankle playing for Ireland against Canada I was worried about whether I'd ever play again, that's how bad it was. I swore to myself that day that I'd never take any of this for granted again.
"I used to do that. I mean, when I walked off the pitch after that game between Middlesbrough and Wimbledon nine years ago we'd lost but I thought, not to worry, there'll be other days, other games like this. But there very nearly weren't for me and if I do play against Chelsea I'll treat it like it could be my very last game . . . I'll savour every minute because I may have learned the hard way but I'm that bit wiser now. I know now what I didn't then . . . just how much all this really should mean."
