Back in the summer, as the fall-out from ‘Newbridge or nowhere’ was just starting to settle and Mayo people began to digest an unfamiliarly early exit from the championship, a door opened for Shairoze Akram.

Akram came to the national consciousness in 2016 when he made history as the first Pakistan-born player to win an All-Ireland title when, just out of minor, he was wing-back on a Mayo U-21 side that beat Cork in a thriller in Ennis.

Since then, he’s been getting on with the business of being a student in DCU and chasing more football glory.

He picked up another All-Ireland medal with the Freshers and for the last two years they’ve been beaten by the eventual winners of the Sigerson Cup.

All the while he has been knocking on the door of a Mayo senior panel, getting to the stage where he featured in a couple of league games last spring and was part of the extended squad that went down to Kildare in Newbridge in the qualifiers.

Defeat in Kildare wasn’t part of the plan but with more free time last summer than he was expecting to have, Akram took himself back to his roots in Haroonabad in the Punjab region in Pakistan.

Expand Close Shairoze Akram in action for Mayo during the Connacht FBD League. Photo: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile SPORTSFILE / Facebook

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Whatsapp Shairoze Akram in action for Mayo during the Connacht FBD League. Photo: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Summer

“I was there during the summer to visit my granny,” Akram said.

“After we were beat by Kildare it opened up a window for me to go home and visit my grandparents so I went back and saw them.

“It was an experience to be honest, you were kind of seeing stuff for the first time again really because you hadn’t seen it in so long, you don’t remember the half of it.”

His family came to Ballaghaderreen for work when he was four but he didn’t start playing football until much later at 11.

It was only at the promptings of former Footballer of the Year Andy Moran that he kept at the game.

Without Moran, he’d likely have left it behind.

“It was Andy funny enough that dragged me into it,” he recalled.

“He was doing PE at the time and he encouraged me to take it up and go with the club and the school team at the time.

“So I went to the national school team and played with them. I struggled initially with the skills and getting to grips with the rules, but then having worked at it I improved and thankfully I’m playing at a higher level now.

“He’s a nice guy personality wise. And he’d do anything for you on or off the pitch which has been brilliant for me and my development as a player and even just off-field stuff too.

“It’s nice to have someone like that there that can help out younger guys and people from different backgrounds.”

Amongst his family back in Pakistan there is some awareness that he’s carving a niche out for himself in Gaelic football.

Explaining the ‘Newbridge of nowhere’ saga would have been a bridge too far.

“That would be a tough one, even for my family,” he smiles. “A lot of the family would have a bit of an idea but my granny and grandad wouldn’t really get it, they’d be old.

“But they know I play a good bit and they are happy enough to keep in touch.”

He also acknowledges that football has helped him and his family settle in the town on the border of Mayo and Roscommon.

“The community in Ballaghaderreen, it’s a very close-knit community.

“They would be encouraging people from different backgrounds, it doesn’t matter where you are from, to get involved.

“Dad would be at a lot of the games now so he’d be friendly with most of the people and Ballagahdereen is a very small town so you’d kind of know everyone and that helped too.

“Being friendly with the guys then, you know what they are about and what they are trying to promote at grassroot levels.”

Akram attended the well-publicised Mayo trials before Christmas.

He’s not part of the set-up just now but hopes that a strong Sigerson Cup campaign can force him back into consideration for what is an already formidable looking half-back line with James Horan having the likes of Colm Boyle, Leeroy Keegan and Paddy Durcan to call on.

“If you look at the half-back line at the moment you a have a Footballer of the Year from 2016 in Lee.

“You have Colm who has a number of All-Stars and Paddy Durcan is an up and coming young guy that is fighting for his spot.

“And Stephen Coen who was captain of the U-21 and minor sides and captain of the Sigerson team from UCD.

“There are a lot of guys trying to break in to that line, it’s a tough line to get into but hopefully I can get in there and make my name there.”

Irish Independent