Despite Dundalk having made sure of group stage football of some sort and potentially being just 180 minutes away from the Champions League proper, most of Stephen Kenny's men are reluctant to admit they are surprised at the situation they find themselves but not Ciarán Kilduff.
The striker might struggle to make the starting 11 for tomorrow night's game against Legia Warsaw, for which some 22,000 tickets are believed have been sold, due to David McMillan's recent run of form. However, just to be in contention still seems remarkable for a player who broke his back four months ago at which point what was described as a "complex" injury looked certain to have wrecked his season.
It was, he says, the sort of injury people usually sustain in car crashes and for a while that night, he feared things would be an awful lot worse than has proven to be the case.
Incredibly, he was back in six weeks rather than six months, reclaiming his place in the team and even scoring when St Patrick’s visited in the league. However, he thinks he may have overdone things a little and had to rest again for a game or two.
That allowed McMillan to kick off a goal-scoring streak that has made him first choice again. That might frustrate the Kildare man more if he didn’t feel fortunate just to be involved in what could be a historic night for Dundalk.
“I went up for the ball with [Brendan] Clarke [the St Patrick’s goalkeeper]. I landed awkwardly and he landed on my neck and forced me down. I knew straight away. I heard a crack and was completely winded but it wasn’t like a normal winding, it was a horrible sensation.
Back brace
“It was scary for the first few weeks because I went straight into a back brace. Everyone thinks, ‘Ah, he’s out of football’ but when you’re in a back brace and you’ve a broken back, a fractured vertebra, football becomes secondary. I’ve a young daughter so it’s little things. You couldn’t move, you couldn’t drive, you couldn’t pick up your daughter, you couldn’t bend, you couldn’t do anything.
“I think it was 10 days in total but it felt like two years. It was literally every morning, you couldn’t move, you couldn’t shower, you couldn’t bend over, simple things, put on your socks and shoes; it was a horrible thing. It was just a bloody straitjacket.
“But thankfully it wasn’t as severe as I initially thought and with the rehab, I healed quickly. The club’s medical team sent me to the best specialist and he told me to get out of the brace because if I’d stayed in it . . . I’d probably still be rehabbing the back because all the muscle would have deteriorated. So he took me out of the brace and said, ‘Listen, for your career, it’s the right decision’.”
Healing fracture
Kilduff then says: “They were very aggressive with me. I think after 11 days I was basically walking around the pitch in Dalymount Park before the Bohs game. It was just a bit surreal. You think, ‘Jeez, he’s got a broken back and now he’s out doing a bit’. It just kept me ticking over and then thankfully the scans came back that it was a healing fracture, touch wood, I haven’t had an ache out of it since. I feel very lucky.”
And so, he gets to turn his attention back to the more mundane things in life, such as the fact that he has lost his place to McMillan.
“Listen,” he says good-naturedly, “I’ve a great relationship with Dave. We played together at UCD, we’ve often talked about it’s been on both of our shoulders.
“At this time, Dave is carrying it where I had to carry it earlier on in the season. We chop and change but I know there is plenty of football for me and him. I think we’ve over 20 something goals between us this year. He has the bulk of them now after the last month or so but it’s great.
“Obviously it’s frustrating on a personal level because you’re thinking, ‘God, I want to score, I want the goals, I want to be the hero against Bate.’ But thankfully, he’s set up so many more ties for us now. I’ll get to make my mark in a few of them.”
