Jack Byrne hasn’t made it yet.
The 20-year-old has the whole country excited and there’s substance behind the hype. He has Blackburn fans champing at the bit for a taste of his attacking midfield creativity and he has Manchester City reluctant to let him go anywhere.
He still has a long way to go. No-one knows that better than him.
After a season in the Eredevisie where the Dubliner played 27 league games on loan at SC Cambuur, you can already see the growth of the St. Kevin’s product – as a footballer, as a man.
'Jack Byrne could be like Wesley Sneijder' – SC Cambuur supporters' club chairman speaks to SportsJOE https://t.co/4RVLW5L5aC
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) March 28, 2016
But now the Irishman wants to step on.
He went to Holland as a teenager for one reason and one reason alone: to play football. He went there so determined to improve as a player that it was all he did. Football was his world. Because Jack Byrne knows he’s only going to get one shot at this.
“I didn’t have many friends over there and it was a bit lonely at times, but you have to keep going,” the Republic of Ireland underage star spoke with the Lancashire Telegraph after signing on loan with Blackburn Rovers for the season ahead.
“I was over there purely for football and for me at that time, at 19 years of age going on 20, it was the best thing for me to do.
“All I concentrated on was football, football, football. I went in in the morning, trained; went home, slept; woke up, trained.
“That was my routine over there, week after week, playing against Feyenoord, Ajax, PSV.”
It wasn’t as if he had an easy ride of it either. After flirting with relegation all season, Cambuur eventually dropped out of the Dutch top flight but it was an experience that is going to stand Byrne in good stead. It was an experience that could well be the making of him.
“It was probably better for my experience that the team was where they were, not mid-table and comfortable and not somewhere where it was OK to lose the ball in front of the back four and lose a goal. It wasn’t that way at all,” he explained.
“Every pass had to be precise, every set-piece had to be precise because we needed to get goals and we couldn’t give goals away that much because of the position we were in.
“There was a lot riding on the games.”
Now, the next challenge is with Owen Coyle and with Blackburn in the Championship. Now, the next challenge is being noticed in England and maybe even breaking into the Ireland team where he trained with the seniors back in March.
But Jack Byrne has been facing challenges all his life.
“I lost my father when I was 11 so there was no-one working in the house,” he said in the Lancashire Telegraph.
“That was part of the reason why I came over a little bit early. Most people don’t go away until they’re 16 or 17, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case for me – there was nothing in Dublin.
“So I packed my bags and went off, hopefully for a better life, and thank God it turned out that way.”
He’s ready for the next step.
Read the full brilliant interview here.
