Saturday Spotlight: Kyle still yearning for Championship glory

Chief Football Writer Paul Fraser found, however, the Scottish striker to be relaxed and in good form in his new surroundings.

WHEN a footballloving, Scottish teenager felt his dream of becoming a professional was in danger of failing to materialise more than a decade ago, he turned to moving luggage around Stranraer’s ferry port to earn some extra summer spending money.

So, after a few difficult years which had left him seriously questioning whether spending life away from his family and friends to kick a ball around was worth it, Kevin Kyle appropriately finds himself back near the sea trying to make a name for himself all over again.

It has never been straightforward for Kyle, ever since walking on to the Stadium of Light turf as a home debutant to a rapturous reception as a substitute for Niall Quinn with 21 minutes left of a 3-2 win over Charlton in May 2001.

In fact, when Kyle relives the memory of the way he had to convince Sunderland to gamble on his services nine years ago, it quickly becomes apparent that his attempt to earn a professional contract was never a straightforward affair.

Given the small size of his hometown, Stranraer, Kyle regularly had to be driven for nearly an hour by his father, Alastair, just to play competitive football, which tended to be on a weekend.

And, while being given occasional six-week stints lifting baggage on and off the ferries crossing the Irish Sea, Kyle would make sure he still had time to play for his local pub team, something that led to him being asked to play for Ayr United boys.

In hindsight, the 52-mile journey to Ayr on a Saturday was well worth it. His displays for both United and the Dumfries & Galloway regional team earned him a reputation as a promising striker, attracting Sunderland’s attention.

Sunderland, though, still needed some convincing about the man referred to throughout his days on Wearside as the ‘former baggage handler’.

“That disappeared when I went to Coventry,” said Kyle in his strong Scottish accent as a smile flitted across his face.

“It was a bit of cash in the summer, working shifts 12 till 12. Loads of bags needed to be lifted from the carousel on to the ship. It’s funny, some weeks I’d earn more doing that than I did in my first year or so at Sunderland.

“While I was doing that job I would have to go to Ayr every Saturday. But one time Ayr Boswell asked me to play for them in a tournament because United weren’t in it.

“That was great, but then mum said ‘there’s some guy from Sunderland on the phone for you, Ian Branfoot’. He wanted me to go on trial the next day, I had to phone him back and say I couldn’t – what about the baggage handling?”

Kyle thought his chance had gone but such concerns were unfounded, although his worries were just beginning.

Branfoot, Sunderland’s Academy director between 1998 and 2002, organised for him to head to the North-East for a period which really opened his eyes.

“I thought I had lost my chance,” said Kyle. “Ian kept his word and got me down for a week’s trial. The training was really difficult because I could not make training in Ayr.

“Some of the things, just simple things like keep-ball, I had never done before. Two people in the middle, ten around the outside, I had never done it.”

Nevertheless, the towering 6ft 3in forward must have had something. He was invited back after scoring in the Academy match the following weekend.

“Then I had another week’s crap training, come the Saturday I scored,” he said.

“Then again, another five days of crap training, come the Saturday I scored. At the end of all that Ian said ‘we’re not quite sure about you’. I thought it was fair enough.

But they offered me a sixmonth trial contract.”

For the first six months he was on a £100 a week, which was repeated for a second six months. He netted 30 goals for the Under-19s, before he was offered a two-year professional contract on £250 a week.

He had already been earmarked as the next Niall Quinn when he made his debut at Southampton, on April 28, 2001.

That appearance was during the season Peter Reid led Sunderland to seventh place and Kyle looked destined for the top.

However, Sunderland’s fall from grace over the succeeding years was an indication of how quickly things can change. Kyle, who does not turn 28 until next June, knows that only too well.

“I remember my home debut for Sunderland, going on with Don Hutchison and thinking ‘he’s just scored the winning goal against England for Scotland’,” said Kyle, who has turned into a Sunderland supporter in the stands this season.

“My dad was close to tears. My best days of my football career were at Sunderland but I’m confident there are even better times ahead.”

After making 107 appearances for Sunderland during his six years there, it was the 2003-04 season, when he scored 16 of the goals that powered Mick McCarthy’s men to the Championship play-offs, he remembers most fondly.

That season illustrated what he was capable of and earned him caps under Berti Vogts for his country.

His displays also presented an opportunity to move to the Premier League with Crystal Palace the following season. “I just felt so great and confident that I felt like I would hit the winner every time I went out,”

he said.

Resisting Palace meant his determination to take Sunderland up the following year was even stronger.

“But, six games into the new season, bang, I had a twinge in my groin and that was the start of my problems,”

he said. “I never got the new contract I was looking for at Sunderland, the injury just got worse.”

What developed was a career-threatening hip problem that just refused to go away.

He missed the rest of that promotion-winning campaign and the majority of the record-breaking 2005-06 season, when Sunderland dropped out of the Premier League with the lowest number of points, a record now held by Derby.

World renowned specialist Hans Muller Wolfhart, who used injections containing calves’ blood and comb from a cockerel’s head to help such problems, and trips to the United States, got him back playing 19 months after he was first sidelined.

And a month after his comeback he scored his only Premier League goal, at Manchester City. That, however, did little to prevent Sunderland’s relegation, ultimately leading to his departure to Coventry for £600,000 in August 2006.

“I went on the Friday and Roy Keane came in on the Monday,” recalls Kyle, who was offered a two-year deal to stay by Quinn after Sunderland had paid for his treatment. “I had it on my mind that I wanted to go. I don’t regret it.”

Now, strangely, he is back in the region, an area he would be happy to return to on a fulltime basis if the opportunity presented itself.

The problem, however, is that while he is currently enjoying a loan stint at Hartlepool United until December 28, he harbours hopes of a return to the Championship.

Since signing for Coventry he has managed five goals in 44 matches, but feels he has not been given a chance to shine at the Ricoh Arena under current boss Chris Coleman.

He went to Wolves on loan, playing 12 times under McCarthy towards the end of last season, and he is set to make his eighth appearance for Pools against Yeovil today.

“Coventry signed me for £600,000 and every 25 appearances it goes up by £100,000. I played 47 games and I never played again, whether that was the reason I don’t know because they deny it, they would deny it,” he said.

“Anyway, the transfer window passed, they were asking too much money for me, and the opportunity to come to Hartlepool came up.”

At Coventry, he was regularly jeered by the fans.

“Before I had even signed, the fans had done an online poll and 95 per cent said I was not going to be a good signing,” he said.

Even at Hartlepool, supporters either love his style or hate it. There’s no middle ground.

“Because I’m 6ft 3in I have to win every single header, I have to hold every single ball up,” said Kyle.

“Against Huddersfield, their fans kept calling me a fat bastard. I went home asking the missus, ‘am I fat?’ She, of course, said ‘no’. I was left thinking it must be my posture!’” The grin said it all.

At Victoria Park he does not intend to hang around too long but the temporary switch has left him hungry for more.

He is living at the town’s marina, with his partner Lynn. His three-year-old son, Max, regularly comes to visit.

It is Max that made him realise there is more to life than football, although having rediscovered his love for the game at Hartlepool, he does not intend to give it up just yet.

“Whether you get paid £10-aweek, £100-a-week or a £1,000- a-week, football is the best job in the world,” he said. “I had to remember at Coventry that for every fan heckling and booing me, there was another fan applauding my every move.”

Ideally, in the few matches he has before his loan spell at Pools expires, he is desperate to help them climb into League One play-off contention, starting with victory over Yeovil today.

The three goals he has to his name for Danny Wilson’s side have left him confident and focused on the future, albeit one at a higher level.

“I feel I can still offer so much to clubs in the Championship,” he said. “I have my best years to come. It is all about trying to do well and getting games. If I don’t get a Championship team in January then I will wait until the summer, when my contract is up.

“I might have to go out on loan again in January. If nothing happens come June and July, and Hartlepool are one of the few teams to offer me a contract, then that is something I would not rule out.

“But every footballer wants to play at the highest level and I said that to Danny Wilson before I arrived.

“I don’t know what happens from the end of December, we will see.

“I do know I’m good enough, I’ve never felt out of place in the Championship yet and I’m not about to start thinking about that now."