Shane Long’s late move on transfer deadline day to Bournemouth should give the recently turned 34-year-old striker the opportunity to play more first team football again and could offer him a final opportunity to make an impact on the international front.
Long’s move went through late on Monday night after Southampton had sealed a deal with Liverpool for Japanese forward Takumi Minamino and Josh King left Bournemouth for Everton. Earlier, Bournemouth boss Jason Tindall had sounded sceptical about the pieces all coming together but as the Irishman’s arrival was confirmed he said he was pleased to have the former Reading, West Brom and Hull City striker at his disposal.
“I am delighted to bring an attacker of Shane’s experience and quality to the club,” he said. “As well as his undoubted technical ability, Shane’s character, maturity and leadership skills are something we have been searching for to add to what is a relatively young squad.
“He has played at the highest level for the majority of his career - including the past nine seasons - and we are hoping to bring the best out of him over the coming months as we aim to gain promotion back to the Premier League.”
Long has not, of course, played nearly as much as he might have over the past few years with the Irishman drifting to the margins of the first team at Southampton. So far in this campaign he had started just once and, of the 14 appearances he had made, five had yielded fewer than 10 minutes on the pitch.
It was clearly an issue for Stephen Kenny who left him out of his initial squad for Ireland’s games in November. There are certainly those who felt the player’s interest had been waning for some time but the manager said that Long’s attitude had been fantastic. The issue, he said, was that he simply wasn’t playing enough club football to merit inclusion in his squad as he would not have the match fitness required to feature in games.
Before that, Kenny had used the striker as a late substitute in the games away to Bulgaria and Slovakia then started him against Wales when Long played 74 minutes.
He might have had a goal in that last game but he has not been famed for his goalscoring through the latter part of his career. During six-and-a-half seasons at Southampton he only broke into double figures once - when he got 10 in 2015/16, comfortably his best season too in terms of game time - and he has endured some terrible droughts.
He might well feel that he deserved more opportunities and more time, perhaps, in a central striking role, but he has at times been eclipsed by others and rarely seemed to be all that hard done by.
When he did score, some of the goals were spectacular, a reminder of what he can do on his day and he can also offer other things to a team with the Irishman bringing strength and intelligence to an attack as well as an admirable application to the defensive side of things.
There used to be a good deal of pace too, it was a key factor in his most famous goal, the one for Ireland against Germany in October 2015 when his strike earned the team what had seemed a highly unlikely victory over the then world champions at the Aviva stadium, but some has inevitably been lost over the past couple of years.
His 17 international goals make him comfortably the leading scorer around the current Ireland squad even if only five were in competitive games and the last was almost four-and-a-half years ago. Back then, it still seemed possible that he would make himself an automatic choice up front for a few years but in truth, he never did quite enough to prevent Martin O’Neill having to eye up alternatives.
Kenny, in any case, still gave the strong impression that he sees Long as having something to contribute to the cause if only he could re-establish himself at club level. Dropping to the Championship where he can hopefully make an impact on Bournemouth’s push for a return to the Premier League should certainly help him to do that.
With David McGoldrick departed and most of Ireland’s other strikers tending to show their inexperience when they play for Kenny it is not hard to imagine the positive influence he might exert around the squad.
It still seems a pity, though, that he left it as long to move on in the hope of making more a mark again, the switch only happening when Minamino’s arrival at Southampton threatened to push him further down the pecking order and deprive him of even the late game cameos.
