Tuesday Blue

Tuesday is Blues Day and this week is an obvious one. Your Tuesday Blue is the hat-trick hero Pádraig Amond. The Carlowman’s clinical finishing gave the Blues the most crucial of wins and allowed fans a very welcome burst of joy, optimism and excitement.

It’s difficult to overstate how big that 4-0 victory could be for the club’s short, medium and long-term future. The quality shown by the whole team on Friday night is very worthy of Premier Division football with Podge’s goals and leadership key to the way forward for the rest of the season.

These were goals 36, 37 and 38 for Amond in a Waterford shirt (34 in the league and 4 in cups). This week’s visit of the champions, Shamrock Rovers, will be his 99th appearance in blue. He has played all 92 league games since he joined the club, but what’s truly remarkable is that he has started 91 of those. He was, somehow, left out for the 5-0 defeat in Dundalk back in March before coming off the bench when it was too late. He hasn’t missed a single game through injury, suspension or other unavailability.

We got to the fourth paragraph before mentioning his age! When Amond signed for Waterford, he was 35 and some criticised the signing saying he was too old by then. He scored four goals in his first four games to stymie that complaint. His longest stretch without a goal was seven games in his first season. He ended that run with a fantastic hat-trick in a 4-2 win at home to Drogheda United. He had gone five without a goal before Friday and smashed in his second hat-trick for the club - becoming the league’s oldest hat-trick scorer for 98 years.

 

Bringing home another ball for the kids to play with (Cian Kelly)

It will be nineteen years in a couple of weeks’ time since Podge made his league debut. He only ever played one game against Waterford - a 2-0 win for Shamrock Rovers at the RSC in August 2007. The teenager played in a three-man attack with Eoin Doyle and Andy Myler (who scored the two goals) up against a defence of Pat Flynn, David Breen, Kenny Browne and Robbie Hedderman. He also won four Irish Under-21 caps back then with teammates including Eddie Nolan, James McCarthy and a guy called Séamus Coleman.

Despite a thirteen-and-a-half year absence, Pádraig has now tallied 70 goals in the League of Ireland for Waterford, Rovers, Sligo and Kildare County. He has played for twelve clubs across four countries and his Blues goal record stands as his second most prolific with 59 for Newport County, 38 here, and 32 at Grimsby Town. 

At 38 and two months, he is still the most lethal finisher in the division. His first goal on Friday was a terrific finish to the corner, whipping on the ball with a lightning-fast reaction. The second showed all his composure and experience to make absolutely sure he beat the keeper and fired to the net with his left foot. The third was the assured strike of a natural goalscorer brimming with confidence.

Having scored one hat-trick against a former club in Sligo Rovers, why not do it again this week against his first league club Shamrock Rovers? This is a man with the highest standards and ambition. An all-time Blues legend. Driven to win.