The one-hour drive across Scotland to Glasgow today will pose no bother to one Irish footballer and his team-mates, as Ryan Nolan and the boys at Raith Rovers prepare for a Scottish Cup tie.
e’s well-travelled, is the Irish-born, Spanish-raised, Milan-educated defender, as he’s already lived in five countries, played club football in four of them, including spells with teams in Serie A and La Liga.
Unwanted detours along the way have held back the former captain of Inter Milan’s U19 side, to the extent that he’s only now, at the age of 24, getting a long run of games at first-team level, in particular a serious knee injury sustained while at Spanish side Getafe, which not only denied him his imminent first-team debut but also kept him out of action for a year.
“I don’t think people realise how hard it is mentally, to get back from an injury like that, when you have to learn to walk and run again,” says Nolan.
“You have doubts if you will be the same player ever again. There’s a lot of pain in the first few weeks, it was a daily mental battle, it was a tough year but I am definitely a stronger person and a better player.
“When things happen in football now I don’t take them to heart, I’m more mature. And I am enjoying it here, playing every week for a great club with a good bunch of lads.”
Irish defender Ryan Nolan in action for Raith Rovers. Photo: Tony Fimister/Raith Rovers FC
What awaits Ryan’s Raith today is a true challenge, a Scottish Cup tie away to Rangers.
Raith’s own form is impressive, the second-tier side already claiming one Premier Division scalp and they’ve also qualified for the final of another cup competition this season, but the bookies are in no doubt about the chances, a Rangers win listed at odds of 1/25.
“This will be a big test, we want to give a good account of ourselves,” says Nolan, who joined Raith in the summer after a spell in England with Northampton Town.
“I have come a long way. For me, no one really knows how much I have been through with my injury and operations. So to be able to play at Ibrox and try to get this club into the next round of the Scottish Cup is a big deal.”
Raith’s home of Kirclady was not where Nolan planned to end up at the age of 24, but his career has taught him to expect the unexpected. Born in Co Clare, his family moved to Spain for work reasons when he was a boy and it was while playing youth football there that he was spotted by Inter Milan (2015).
He played in the UEFA Youth League, captained the youth side. He was good, just not good enough to make the first team.
“I worked my ass off and did ok for the four years I was there, I was captain of the Primavera side in my last season so I did well, I couldn’t have done much more as it’s so, so hard to break into the Inter Milan first team, there’s maybe a 1% chance of an academy player breaking into the first team,” he says, though he says he gained Italian habits which stood him well in his current career.
At the time the only Irishman in Italy, he’s pleased to see compatriots like Kevin Zefi, Cathal Heffernan and Festy Ebosele move to Italy.
Raith Rovers’ Ryan Nolan. Photo: Tony Fimister/Raith Rovers FC
“My Inter youth team coach is Kevin Zefi’s manager now it will be a great experience for him and the Irish boys, if they can’t play at Serie A level then they should try and drop down the leagues as it’s still a good standard, I did enjoy my time in Italy.”
Moving on from Milan in 2019, two spells in Serie C were frustrating, Covid-19 disrupting things, but he was still rated and in 2020 was signed by Getafe.
Initially hired for their B team he was promoted to the first team and he was on the bench (twice) for La Liga games.
A week out from Christmas in 2020 he was due to start for the first team in a Spanish Cup tie.
“I felt my luck was changing, I was back to my best, things were looking really good. And then disaster struck with my knee injury in training three days out from the Cup tie, that was hard to take,” he said.
“The gaffer had told me I was going to play in the Cup. So that made it even more heart-breaking,” he says, recalling the misery of spending Christmas Day in his hospital bed as the pain was so bad.
“It was 11 months before I could even train again. When you go through an injury like that, questions go through your head, is it worth it? Especially in the position I had been in, being so close to the first team with a Spanish club.
“I had to mentally make sense of what happened, you think ‘why me?’. Those are questions I can’t answer, things just happen. I wasn’t like I had not been working and putting in the effort, it was out of my hands, a freak injury.
“That comforted me in the year I was out. You do wonder, will I be the same player when I get back?”
A spell at Northampton last season didn’t yield games but allowed him regain fitness, Raith’s scouts saw him in pre-season and once they realised they could sign the one-time Inter Milan youth team skipper, they snapped him up.
Raith was a long way from his Serie A and La Liga environment but one he was happy to bed into.
“People in Ireland probably don’t know much about the Scottish Championship but it’s a good league, good clubs, good facilities, the top teams are a good as the bottom six in the Premier,” he says.
Nolan will assess his club future in the summer. His own Ireland career was brief – caps at U17 (alongside Declan Rice) and U18 level, then omission with Stephen Kenny’s U21s where he made the provisional squad but not the final one.
On his last outing in the green shirt (2016) he started, in an U18 friendly against Germany, ahead of Dara O’Shea. He plays down the significance of that now, though playing for Ireland again is in the background.
“I have been starved for football for so long I am just happy to be doing well with Raith,” he says. “I’m only 24, a lot of centre halves don’t peak until 28 so I have a lot of years left to learn and improve.
“I know that it can all be taken away from you, not even in a day but in a second, as happened to me with the knee injury.
“At my age now the most important thing is to enjoy what I am doing, you feel better in your life if you are playing well on the pitch.”
