After 21 months in cold storage Luca Connell is finally getting the game time his career desperately needs.
As a 17-year-old the midfielder was about the only bright spot at Bolton Wanderers as they fell into administration and relegation at the end of the 2018/19 season.
Connell had already declared to play for Ireland with his progress at Bolton bringing him into Mick McCarthy’s squad as clubs hovered around for his signature.
Celtic came up with a four year contract for the midfielder but there was no obvious pathway into the first team with just a couple of Glasgow Cup matches and Challenge Cup ties to kick on his career.
Last season Connell found himself behind Scott Brown, Callum McGregor, Olivier Ntcham, Ryan Christie, Tom Rogic and Nir Bitton for a first team place.
Carious transfer windows came and went without the teenager being sent out on loan but after one match for Queens Park last Saturday he is back in the international set up at u-19 level.
Ireland face Wales in a friendly this afternoon with u-21 boss Jim Crawford telling The 42 how much he is looking forward to working with the Celtic midfielder.
Luca is a player with really good potential, so the more first-team games he plays, he’ll get better, and he understands that. I think we’ve a lot more to see from Luca. He was at the crest of a wave playing first-team games at Bolton. He was attracting a lot of interest and rightly so, he was playing well.
I was delighted for him, because when he came into the [Ireland] 18s a number of years ago, he was playing well and enjoying his football.
Then he went to Celtic and had a couple of injuries. Celtic then weren’t playing too many games at U21 level. He’s been playing in-house games and this age is such a vital age that you just need to be playing competitive games, whether that’s U23s with your club in the UK or first-team games out on loan, you need to be challenged.
He’s at that now, he’s gone on loan, made his debut [for Queen’s Park] on Saturday, done well, tired towards the end of the game, which is to be expected. So [later today when Ireland play Wales] will be another few minutes under his belt to help him on his way for the rest of the season.
Players will always experience peaks and troughs through their careers but, over such a short period of time, he’s a first-team player at Bolton, he’s getting invited into the senior Ireland camp.
Then, all of a sudden, he goes to a huge club, Celtic, and for whatever reason their 21s football is stopped. All of a sudden they’re not playing games and that can affect a player, certainly with regards to their development, but also mentally too, because that’s all the boy knows, preparing to play a game at the weekend.
But I’ll tell you what going on loan has done, it’s given him a new lease of life. He’s buzzing from playing at the weekend.
I was laughing with him yesterday saying that he’s got a real chance of silverware at the club. It’s important he’s playing games, it really is. Hopefully he’ll play a lot of minutes between now and the end of the season and then he’ll go back to Celtic and he’s got to re-evaluate the situation.
Lee O’Connor, on loan at Tranmere, is also in the Ireland squad with today’s match live on You Tube with a 1pm kick off.