From the 10th tier of English football to playing a World Cup qualifier last week, Anthony Pilkington has made some journey in seven years.
Probably best known for how many times his senior Irish debut was delayed due to injury, Anthony Pilkington could be an Irish squad regular for the foreseeable future, whoever gets the job to replace Giovanni Trapattoni.
It certainly wouldn’t be beyond the Blackburn native to make himself an international regular, as he has climbed football’s long ladder very impressively in his seven years in the game.
After bouncing around the youth systems of local clubs like Blackburn, Preston North End and Manchester United, Pilkington’s football career began at lowly Atherton Collieries, a team in the first division of the North West Counties Football League, the 10th tier of English football.
Just before the end of the 2006 season, after a hat-trick against the glamour boys of the division, FC United of Manchester, a 17-year-old Pilkington signed for Stockport County of League 2.
Under Irish boss Jim Gannon, Stockport were in flying form and after just missing out at the end of the 2007 season, the following year, Pilkington scored in the play-off final win over Rochdale that saw the Hatters promoted to League 1.
Stockport got into financial difficulties during their first year in League 1 and Pilkington was sold to Huddersfield in January and over the course of 90 games in his two-and-a-half years at the club he became more of a goal threat (he scored in six consecutive games in October 2010).
That inevitably attracted attention and when Norwich offered the League 1 side £2million in July 2011, Pilkington became a Premier League player, a tremendous rise in such a short space of time.
His first year couldn’t really have gone much better, playing regularly in the top flight as well as scoring eight Premier League goals. Paul Lambert left Norwich at the end of the season but Chris Hughton kept faith with Pilkington, and he retained his place in the starting XI, most famously scoring the winner against Manchester United back in November 2012.
With his Irish qualification known about for a while (he played for the Under 21s in 2008) calls for Pilkington to get a run in the senior squad were finally heeded when he was named in the panel to play Poland in a friendly in February.
Pilkington eventually withdrew with an injury, a pattern that was repeated five more times before he finally made his debut in green, coming on as sub in the 2-1 defeat to Sweden earlier this month.
Despite making the international breakthrough, the arrival of many new faces at Carrow Road has seen Pilkington slightly frozen out so far this season at club level.
Still, after his remarkable rise through the ranks thus far, we reckon that won’t last long either.
