Jamie McGrath: 'It's very ruthless, sometimes you have to remember how good you are'
Football is both global game and local village.
It’s coming up on four years since Jamie McGrath left the League of Ireland behind but the ties that bind remain even now that he makes his living in Scotland and has his eyes fixed on Amsterdam.
The Republic of Ireland’s Euro 2024 qualifier away to Netherlands should have been the Irish game’s biggest fixture this month but it is both a damning indictment of the team and a sign of the domestic game’s rise that it isn’t.
That boast is reserved for last Sunday’s FAI Cup final at a throbbing Aviva Stadium and McGrath has been following the league’s progress closely from his Pittodrie base out by the shores of the North Sea.
It was only to be expected that he be asked if he knew Bohemians midfielder and fellow Meathman James Clarke. He doesn’t, as it turns out, but McGrath has been watching a decent wedge of League of Ireland lately.
He has been impressed by Clarke – and by Jonathan Afolabi - and Dylan Connolly, a former teammate at Dundalk and St Mirren, but now with Bohs, was able to cement that opinion with some insider’s words of praise.
Clarke never earned trials in the UK, Afolabi has had five clubs across the water, but both are still young enough to follow in the footsteps of McGrath and Celtic’s Liam Scales by catching the eye here at home and earning their passage over.
They are two of the seven players in the squad Stephen Kenny called up for this latest international window who played senior football in the domestic league before making that move and eventually appearing for their country at senior level.
McGrath was 25 when he moved across the Irish Sea to play, Scales was just two years younger and the Wicklow man has made an impressive breakthrough in Glasgow,
Read on irishexaminer.com
