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 “At the minute I’m probably the forgotten man in Irish football and if I kept associating with people I’d been associating with before, I would have completely gone off the scale”, said Aaron Connolly in an interview with Irish Football Fan TV ahead of the new season. “Now I think I’ve turned that around and hopefully people will be able to see that with performances and work rate and hopefully goals.”

Connolly’s first attempt at rejuvenating his career came on loan at Middlesbrough for the second half of last season, and it didn’t work, so the latest epiphany has sent him to Italy, on a season-long loan to Venezia in Serie B. Venezia finished bottom of Serie A last season and have made an indifferent start to this campaign, picking up four points in their first four games of the season, the latest a 2-0 loss to Benevento.

Connolly made his first Venezia start in that defeat at the weekend, and though it’s way too early to be drawing conclusions, it was a pretty encouraging showing. Connolly made plenty of interesting admissions in the interview, which included a revelation that Keith Andrews contrasted his lifeless performance against Azerbaijan last year with that of an U21 performance against Sweden, which was filled with hard running. 

What was encouraging at the weekend was how sharp Connolly looked: he spoke after the game of how the pre-season campaign was more intense than he had ever experienced before.  

Let’s look at a couple of examples…

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