There’s something so wonderfully innocent about Daryl Horgan, the footballer and the person.
He came on at the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday night to make his international debut and you’d swear he was just chasing ball around Galway again. He went after it, he screamed for it and, when he got a lick of possession, he started running at boys like he was only doing it for the craic.
Afterwards, whilst the Irish public were falling over themselves to laud praise on their newest sensation, the 24-year-old comes walking out to meet the media and he’s just the same nice, friendly and mannerly guy he has always been.
If you didn’t watch the wonders he was performing on the pitch, you wouldn’t know his life was in any way different when, in the space of four months, he’s gone from a League of Ireland player to a professional in England and now a fully-fledged Ireland footballer.
The real beauty of it all is that he doesn’t seem to realise or care about the magnitude of what he is doing. He’s just taking it all in his lightning quick stride and he’s not changing himself – not as a man and not as a player. After all, being Daryl Horgan is what got him here in the first place. Why the hell would he change?
So he comes out after the defeat to Iceland and he greets everyone. He shakes hands with the press individually, he asks how they are.
He’s reminded that it wasn’t that long ago that he was heading to Finn Harps for games and now look at him. But not even that could faze this young man or make him forget his roots.
“The beautiful Ballybofey? It’s a great spot,” Horgan’s reply just sums him up.
“The last time I went to Ballybofey, the pitch was a carpet so I won’t say too much about it.”
He goes on to talk about scoring two that day for Dundalk. He recalls playing with the like of Andy Boyle and Conor Hourihane and John Egan in Ireland and now they’re playing together for Ireland.
It’s not lost on him how quickly his world has transformed but it doesn’t scare him either. The only man shitting himself in Lansdowne Road on Tuesday night was the poor Icelandic full back who Horgan had spread on toast as soon as he entered the fray.
It was a fearless performance from the debutant who did more in 30 minutes to push himself up the Irish pecking order than some ever have with their entire careers.
It wasn’t a daunting prospect though – being given that one chance. Some people were born for this kind of thing.
“You’re always going to be a bit nervous but, at the end of the day, it’s a game of football,” he said. Simple as that.
“It’s 11 v 11. You just do what you can. Obviously different games are always going to be different but it was a chance for me to play for Ireland. I wasn’t going to turn that down.”
How the hell could he? A chance to play for his country doing what he does best. It was there to be grabbed with both hands and, by Jesus, he smothered it.
“I just tried to play my normal game, I tried to affect the game – that’s the point of wingers really.
“I just tried to get on the ball and tried to do things and that’s the only thing I had in my head really.”
It was just a game of football after all. It was just 11 v 11.
It was just a chance to play for Ireland. What more is there to know?
