HOME AND AWAY - DOMINIC FOLEY  IT MAY be heading for a decade since the last of six appearances for the Republic of Ireland but Dominic Foley remains perhaps the most internationally minded of our senior footballers. Now with Cercle Brugge, who take on Mechelen in the first leg of the Belgian Cup semi-finals this evening, it is the 12th club he has played for in five different countries since taking the well-trodden path to England in his late teens.

The tally of clubs has been significantly boosted by his various spells out on loan and he was still officially a Wolves player during his brief, though rather successful, stint with Ethnikos Piraeus in Greece.

Still, the now 32-year-old jumped at opportunities to make new starts in Belgium and Portugal when many less adventurous players simply would have stuck with what they knew.

“I think initially the problem is moving away from home,” he says, “but once you get over that homesickness after a month, or six months or two years – whatever it takes really – then you might as well be in Greece or Portugal or Belgium as England.

“It doesn’t always work out, of course. I was only in Portugal for six months or so after which I headed back to Dublin and Bohemians but that can easily happen in England too.

“The bottom line is I’m always one for trying things, I hate the idea of having regrets about not taking an opportunity.”

Braga went sour because Foley couldn’t nail down a place in the Sporting team while his wife, Aoife, struggled to settle, in part because of problems with the language.

But after a strong performance by the striker for Bohemians in an InterToto Cup game against Gent caught the eye of the Belgian club’s then manager, Georges Leekens, the chance for them to strike out came around again.

“I count myself very lucky that the opportunity to come to Belgium came up after that,” he says.

“The circumstances (of his departure from Dalymount) were difficult and I’m sorry about that because there were good people at Bohemians. I’m still in contact with friends there. The fact is, though, that I was owed money and they didn’t pay it to me. Okay, I used it to my advantage, or at least it worked out to my advantage in the end, but it went to a tribunal and it said I was free to go.”

Under Leekens and his successor, Trond Sollied, the Corkman thrived at Gent with one of the highlights of his time there being the opening goal he scored in last year’s 3-2 cup final defeat by Anderlecht in front of 50,000 supporters in Brussels.

Sollied moved to Holland, though, and the new coach, Michel Preud’homme, preferred a smaller, quicker type of forward to the Irishman.

“It’s a real pity because we were very happy in Gent, it’s a beautiful place and the people are great. In England I was never a regular but here I play every week and there’s no better feeling for a footballer.

“To be honest, it was like I’d found the place I was always meant to be and Aoife was very happy too; we’ve probably never been happier.

“But wherever you are, when the time comes to move on there’s just no point in avoiding it really and things have worked out well for me.

“In the last two years Cercle seem to have made a lot of progress with new sponsors and bigger players coming in.

“Hopefully, they’re really going places. We’ve struggled a little of late but we’re eighth in the table and a win would probably send up to fourth, which would be pretty good.

“And we’ve the first leg of the cup semi against Mechelen to think about; all the big teams went out in the first two rounds so there’s a great opportunity to play in another cup final, maybe more this time.”

His only real regret about his three and a half years in Belgium, it seems, is his failure to learn the local language, mainly Flemish.

“The problem,” he says with a hint of embarrassment, “is that absolutely everybody here speaks English which is great at first but actually ends up being a bit of a problem because there’s very little incentive to make the effort. I was at Braga for six months but I could speak a fair bit of Portuguese by the time I left.”

An incentive has been provided of late in the form of his baby daughter, Annaleigh.

“She was born over here and if things go to plan she’ll be going to school over here,” he says, “so I finally started taking lessons about six months ago.”