A glove supreme

While he arrived at Preston North End too late to be considered for their Player Of The Season, Wayne Henderson is a shoo-in for the Person At The Club With The Cleanest Car.

“I’ve washed it twice already this week to try and take my mind off what’s been happening on the pitch,” the 23-year-old Dublin goalkeeper explains.
Has the buffing and waxing had the desired psychological effect?
“Not really,” Henderson grimaces. “We looked a certainty for the Play-Offs, but then we had a really bad run of results. The carpet got cleaned the other day as well, and I’ve been doing a bit of golfing with Callum Davidson who always beats me ‘cause he plays off one and I’m 16.”
If you were too busy scoffing prawn cocktail sandwiches at Old Trafford this season to keep tabs on what was happening in the Championship, Preston, whom Wayne joined in January from Brighton, finished one point shy of the Play-Offs, meaning that it’s away trips again next season to Layer Road and the KC Stadium.
The silver lining in this particular cloud is that Henderson is now available for the Republic of Ireland’s games against Ecuador and Bolivia. With Shay Given among the senior players being rested, there’s a good chance of him adding to his four international caps, the first of which came against Sweden in March 2006.
“If Preston had made the Play-Off Final, it would’ve been two days after the Bolivia game, but we didn’t so it’s given me another opportunity to travel with the squad, which I absolutely love doing,” he enthuses. “You can dream about it as a kid and try and equate it with playing your first league game, but nothing prepares you for making your international debut. I was lucky enough to get a half against Sweden, which was a friendly, so it was 45,000 lunatic Paddys cheering rather than the 37,000 you got with the temporary seating in. I went on just as we scored the second goal, and the noise was deafening. There’s a bit of a Celtic thing in my family too, so pulling off that Henrik Larsson save was another big thrill.”
Even better was to come when Wayne made his competitive debut at Lansdowne against the Czech Republic.
“I was starting, so I was on the pitch for the anthem and could see my whole family behind the dug-out, which was definitely the proudest moment of my life.”
Football being a cruel mistress, Henderson’s impeccable performance against the Czechs was followed by him conceding that goal in the Stadio Olimpico Serravalle.
“I wish I could say the ball hit a bobble or something, but it didn’t,” he chuckles somewhat mirthlessly. “It’s a cliché, but you really do learn from a mistake like that, which was symptomatic of the whole game really. Any fan who questions whether players care as much as they do should have been in that dressing-room – or the one after the Cyprus game. It was quite highly-publicised that we had a meeting afterwards to thrash out why things went so badly wrong in Nicosia. I don’t think any of us will ever really understand what happened that night, but it shows the squad’s togetherness and determination to put things right – which we did a few days later against the Czech Republic.”
We had two senior pros, Richard Dunne and Lee Carsley, giving Steve Staunton a rave review recently in hotpress, but how do the younger Ireland players get on with him?
“Really, really well,” Wayne says with genuine warmth. “He was still at Aston Villa when I was there and we played a few reserve team games together. Everyone at Villa worshipped him, me included, so it was awesome to get a call-up so soon after he got the Ireland job. Some managers look through you if you’re not in the starting XI, but Stan pays equal attention to everybody in the squad. It’s the same with the coaching staff – everything Shay Given’s part of, I'm part of, which is really encouraging.
“When judging Stan’s results so far, you have to bear in mind the average age of the squad, which is very young. I appreciate people’s expectations being high, but he’s come in for stick that he doesn’t deserve.”
Talking of the aforementioned Mr. Given, a little FAI dickie-bird tells me that Shay is Wayne’s footballing hero.
“Yeah, along with me da Paddy, who played for Shamrock Rovers, and my two older brothers, Dave and Stephen, who were all over the place. Neither of us are the tallest of keepers – I’m 6’1” and he’s a tiny bit shorter I think – but you don’t need to be 6’4” or 6’5” when you play with the presence and confidence he has. Off the pitch too, he’s a real inspiration.”
It’s worth noting that 13 of the 23 players journeying to the States next week are from the Championship.
“The remarkable thing this season – apart from Roy Keane and Niall Quinn at Sunderland – is the number of Irish lads who’ve been getting their game every week and doing really well. Paul McShane – who I used to room with at Brighton – and Stephen Elliot are both top, top players and, as a Bohemians fan, I’m thrilled that Stephen Ward’s come straight from the League of Ireland and started banging them in for Wolves.”
Has word reached Preston yet of the €21 million that Bohs are going to get for selling Dalymount?
“That’s worth knowing in case things go wrong for me in England!” he laughs. “You could throw a stone at the Dalymount floodlights from where I grew up, so I’m delighted things are looking up for them. If I got to play a season or two with Bohs later in my career, it’d be a dream come true.”