‘IT JUST FELT SO SURREAL TO SCORE GOAL AGAINST SPURS’
PADRAIG Amond certainly made a name for himself with an FA Cup goal against Tottenham last weekend. Now we just have to learn how to say it.
“It’s pronounced Pawrig,” explains the Irish striker, whose first-half header against the Premier League giants earned Newport a 1-1 draw and a glamorous replay at Wembley.
“But everyone makes a hash of it. Football on 5 asked me, and they usually get it right. Everyone else just has a bash and gets it wrong.
“Five Live were mangling it up against Spurs. By all accounts, they tried about five or six different versions in the first half ! Eventually the wife of someone I know stuck her head round the door and put them right.
“It’s a daily challenge, let me tell you. My girlfriend is called Caoimhe, which is pronounced Keeva. When we ring the Chinese [takeaway], we just say it’s for Rose Smith.
Mangled
“The worst thing is trying to order Sky or something. Especially now I’m living in Wales. I’ve got a stupid Irish name that nobody can pronounce and you have to spell out. An accent that nobody understands. And now I’ve got a Welsh address that makes no sense. You’re on the phone for about 25 minutes and all they’ve got is your name and address. It’s great fun!” If Amond can inspire Newport to victory on Wednesday night, that much-mangled name will go down in FA Cup history. They were ahead until the 82nd minute on a pulsating night at Rodney Parade, but Harry Kane’s late leveller all
but ended the League Two Exiles’ hopes of an upset. At odds of 33-1, few give Michael Flynn’s men a glimmer on Wembley’s wide expanse, but Amond has heard it all before.
“It was the same before the first game,” says the forward, whose side will face Millwall or Rochdale if they pull off a miracle. “I did a radio interview in Ireland and they basically said ‘best of luck’ in a way that meant ‘you’ve got no chance’.
“I said ‘thanks – and I’ll speak to you again before the fifth-round draw’. They laughed but I rang them back on Sunday and they were kind of like ‘OK, you were right’.
“You see mad results all over the world in football. Senegal beating France in 2002. Ireland beating Italy in 1994. Underdogs do have their day. And maybe Saturday was our day. Or maybe it was just a dress rehearsal.”
Now 29, Amond has grafted at football’s coalface for more than a decade. Shamrock Rovers. Pacos de Ferreira. Accrington Stanley. A title-winning stint in the National League with Grimsby. Relegation from the EFL with Hartlepool.
But for a controversial transfer in the summer, he might still be at Victoria Park, anxiously awaiting his wages and preparing for a trip to Barrow.
Pools, 18th in the National League, are losing £130,000 a month and face administration unless a saviour is found.
“It’s incredibly sad,” says Amond, who scored 15 goals in 53 games for Hartlepool. “But we knew there were issues, even in the summer. We got paid, but it was regularly late. You’d be travelling down to games, still waiting for money. Lads had direct debits out on certain days and they’d miss payments.
“But that’s not why I left. The truth is I didn’t want to play in the Conference. I didn’t think I was too good for it or anything like that. I just knew what kind of a slog it was.
Scraped
“At Grimsby, we had a fantastic side. We had Toto Nsiala and Jon Nolan, who are doing well at Shrewsbury. Omar Bogle is at Cardiff now (on loan at Peterborough). And we only just scraped through the play-offs.
“The first time I met (Hartlepool boss) Craig Harrison in the summer, I said ‘Look, I don’t think our squad is strong enough’.
“He was talking about how we’d pass our way out of the league. I said ‘Nobody passes their way out of this league – it ain’t going to happen’. I told him you need a certain type of player, a certain level of experience – and that was from someone who’s done it.
“A bid came in from Newport. I was given permission to speak to them. We agreed everything and then Hartlepool went back on their word.
“I was frustrated, but I played the first four-five weeks before Newport came in again. I took a lot of stick from people saying I didn’t try, but it’s a lie. We get GPS stats on all the games and I was at the top for running distances. I’m not saying I played well. I didn’t. I was out of form. But I didn’t down tools.
“Do I feel fortunate? Yeah. There’s a good chance that, by the time we play Spurs, Hartlepool could be in administration. But, believe me, I take no pleasure in saying that.”
Set against this backdrop of strife and slog, it is little wonder that Amond, a talented curler in his homeland, felt a sense of wonder when Spurs came to town.
“Twenty seconds into the game, their centre-half got the ball and rapped it into Harry Kane,” he recalls. “First touch, he played a ball out to the winger. It was a ridiculous pass and straightaway you see the quality. You’re thinking ‘This could be a long night, you know’.
“At one stage, Moussa Dembele turned our lad and just glided away with the ball. We were sprinting as fast as we could and couldn’t get near him.
“I was just pleased Christian Eriksen didn’t play because the last time I saw him live he was destroying Ireland in the World Cup play-off in Dublin.
“When the header went in, I was running away saying to myself ‘You’ve scored against Tottenham, you’ve scored against Tottenham’. And all I could think was ‘Don’t laugh’ because that’s how surreal it felt.
Approach
“It still does. I mean, Spurs’ next four fixtures are Liverpool, Newport County, Arsenal and Juventus. Spot the odd one out!” Yet, for all the eulogising, Amond believes the same up-and-at-‘em approach that restricted Spurs to just three shots on on goal at Rodney Parade can also be deployed at Wembley.
“Let’s not make any bones about how good these lads are,” he says. “But that’s why you have to take away their time. If you let them look up, you’re dead. If you get in their faces and get them looking down at the ball, you’ve got a chance.
“We’ll have to work hard. After the first game, one of our lads was just lying sprawled out in the middle of the dressing room, totally wrecked. That’s the kind of the energy we used.
“When Tottenham came to Rodney Parade, no Spurs player looked at our surface and thought ‘I can’t wait to get out there’. We, on the other hand, are desperate to play at Wembley.
“We’ll break the game down. We’ll battle. And if they play a weaker side or have an off day, who knows?”