THERE MUST be times when that season a few years back he was the only outfield player in the Premier League to play every minute of every game seems a very long time ago to Stephen Kelly.

Too much of the rest of his career, he could be forgiven for complaining, has been spent doing what managers say players should do when they’re not playing regularly: training hard, waiting patiently and looking to grab every opportunity that presents itself.

If Kelly complains, though, he does it in private. Through all his ups and down during what is now starting to push on towards a decade either in or around the Irish squad he has never, it seemed, uttered an angry word about being seen as something of a bit part player and as he sits and contemplates games that may be the gateway to his first major international tournament, he really has no need to anymore. His moment may just have come.

It was 2007/08 when Kelly was an ever present at Birmingham but within a matter of months he had lost his place and was on his way out, first to Stoke on loan and then, in the summer of the following year to Fulham where he has struggled to fully establish himself as a regular.

Including his time at Spurs Kelly has comfortably more than 100 top flight games under his belt at this stage but just 20 have come since he arrived at Craven Cottage more than two years ago – a period during which he has actually appeared more times for his current club in Europe and Ireland on the international stage than he has for the Londoners in all three domestic competitions.

Characteristically, he has an upbeat take on it ahead of the trip to Tallinn where he is likely to win his 29th international cap. “It gives you a great boost for these games and an insight into these teams and what these players are like and how they set up against you.”

Sure enough, only last week he got to play against a Wisla Krakow side that included regular Estonian goalkeeper Sergei Pareiko which by itself gives him a bit of a head start on most of his team mates when it comes to weighing up Friday night’s opponents. Damien Duff, as it happens, did go one better by scoring one of Fulham’s four goals in the match.

Since then, Kelly’s club fortunes have effectively been boosted by serious injury to Zdenek Grygera, the Czech international right back to damaged knee ligaments in Sunday’s game against Tottenham and who could not be out for the rest of the season.

Nobody wished the injury on him but players know that these things make for opportunities and managers need them to take them. That’s the game and Kelly, just as he hopes to advance his international reputation in the absence of John O’Shea in Estonia, will aim to make the most of the situation.

“If I go back (to Fulham) now then there’s a good chance that I will be starting due to the injury that Grygera has,” he acknowledges. “I actually think that in the games that I’ve played I’ve done well enough to get a starting place without somebody’s misfortune but it’s football and these things happen.”

At international level they have been happening a little more regularly of late and so, having hovered between earning three and five caps a year for each of the last five years, Kelly will almost certainly make his ninth appearance of 2011 for Ireland in Tallinn with the Dubliner having a good shot of making it to double figures on Tuesday given the scale of John O’Shea’s injury and the number of bookings being carried into the first play-off by Irish players.

His versatility has certainly helped to endear him to Trapattoni who handed him the captain’s armband in the game against Uruguay and has started him at centre and left back in recent games. On Friday, though, it will be back to his preferred right hand side.

“Yeah, hopefully it’s another chance for me to play and to continue on the good run of form I have had recently,” he says. “I’ve played an awful lot of games in the last couple of months and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve been far more involved.

“I actually came into the squad when I was 19 or 20 and have been in it since but I wouldn’t have as many caps as I would like or should have. This campaign has been good for me, though; I’ve had the chance to play in big games, to make my mark and show people what I can do.

“I feel I’ve contributed a lot to what we’ve done and what we’ve achieved so far. Hopefully, I can continue in that vein and help get us to a championship. That would be amazing.”