IT tells you everything about Graham Kavanagh that when cash-strapped Cardiff flogged him to Wigan for £400,000 in 2006, Bluebirds fans demonstrated outside Ninian Park.
Mind you, it probably tells you just as much that Latics chairman Dave Whelan sent a helicopter to pick him up!
“Someone from Wigan actually rang and said: ‘Can we land a helicopter in your back garden?'” recalls the Dubliner. “I said: ‘Are you taking the p***?’
“In the end I went to a heliport and it landed just round the corner from the club. That was incredible. I was thinking: ‘This is complete Footballers’ Wives’.
“Ten weeks later we were promoted and I was lying on the beach thinking: ‘Did that really happen or was it a dream?’”
So it was that Kavanagh finally made it back to the Premier League, ten years after he’d walked out on Bryan Robson’s samba-suffused Middlesbrough side for a crack at first-team football with Stoke. A decade in which he went from, in his own words, “a young player who maybe needed an arm around him” to an intelligent, no-nonsense midfield leader described by Paul Jewell as the easiest man he ever managed.
“Middlesbrough were really on the up,” he says. “You wanted to remain a part of a club like that and train alongside great players like Juninho and Ravanelli. But it’s no good if you’re not playing regular first-team football. I sometimes wonder what might have been. I don’t think Bryan gave me a fair crack. But I think what happened to me made me mentally stronger. I grew up at Stoke. I learned to stand on my own two feet.”
Trigger
Kavanagh spent five years with the club, his cultured passing and refusal to accept defeat earning the midfielder legendary status among the Potters’ fans.
He also scored the first-ever goal at the Britannia Stadium and won the first of 16 Irish caps while playing in the Second Division in 1998.
Gudjon Thordarson, his manager at Stoke, remembers “an excellent footballer and a good man. Even at the end of his career, he was still a topclass passer of the ball. He could pull the trigger from wherever.”
But for Mick McCarthy, who managed Kavanagh for Ireland, his qualities off the pitch were just as important.
“I’d known of him from his time playing for the U21s and he was one of the good guys,” said McCarthy.
“He turned up, wanted to play and, if he didn’t play, he didn’t make a fuss as he was a good pro who knew his chance would come in another game.
“He was always a leader on the pitch, always happy to have the ball and take responsibility and was quite vocal. He was a natural captain at a number of clubs, and he was a good, solid professional.
“He was a winner and players of that calibre will have influence over other players on the pitch, which is great for a manager.” Signed by Cardiff for £1m in 2001, Kavanagh scored 16 goals and was crowned player of the year as the Bluebirds clinched promotion to the Championship after defeating Queens Park Rangers in the play-off final.
Then came that move to Wigan and two years in the Premier League before an injury-hit stay at Sunderland and three years of Indian summer with Carlisle.
Crack
Retirement in 2011 was followed by his appointment as assistant to Greg Abbott at Carlisle and, when Abbott moved on in September, three wins from three caretaker games earned a first crack at management.
“I’m not at all surprised,” said Jewell, who managed Kavanagh at Wigan. “Kav has a fantastic football brain and was always a great professional. He loved training and always wanted to learn. Carlisle have got someone who will work and work.
“He was a big voice but always encouraging people. He always wanted people to have the will-to-win he had. So Kav will say it how it is and be straight with the players.”
And the man himself says that has been the key to the change in fortunes. “I spoke some harsh truths, which a few needed to hear,” said Kavanagh, who has had messages of support from the likes of Roy Keane and Martin O’Neill.
“You might only get one chance in management so I have to take it.”
GRAHAM KAVANAGH FACTFILE
Born: Dublin, 1973 (Age 39)
Playing career: KAVANAGH started out at local side Home Farm and then had trials with boyhood favourites Liverpool, but eventually signed for Middlesbrough in 1991. A midfielder, he made 35 appearances for Boro but left to join Stoke for £250,000 in 1996 after falling out of favour with manager Bryan Robson.
Kavanagh scored 33 goals in 202 games for the Potters before a £1m switch to Cardiff in 2001, netting 15 times in his first season and helping to secure promotion to the First Division.
Signed by Wigan for £400,000 in 2005, he won promotion to the Premier League and played in the League Cup final against Manchester United before joining Sunderland in 2006, winning the Championship in his first season.
However, injuries restricted Kavanagh’s to just 14 games at the Stadium of Light and after two loan spells at Sheffield Wednesday he joined Carlisle in 2009.
Managerial career: AFTER an initial loan spell at Carlisle, Kavanagh returned to Brunton Park on a permanent basis as player-assistant to Greg Abbott, making 50 appearances before retiring in 2011.
When Abbott was sacked in September, Kavanagh was named caretaker manager and after three wins from three was appointed on a permanent basis.
