Chris Birchall - Radio Cumbria Interview

Last updated : 28 November 2008 By Thetashkentterror

Chris Birchall
New United loan signing Chris Birchall spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria's Derek Lacey on Thursday morning about making his loan move to Carlisle from Coventry, Birchall also talking about his international career with Trinidad and Tobago :


" It's nice to be here, I had been hearing that there has been interest for a number of months, the gaffer (Greg Abbott) has told me that they have been watching me. It never came off though because obviously I was trying to fight my way into the Coventry team and play international football as well. So I sat down with the gaffer at Coventry (Chris Coleman) and he said that there was some interest from Carlisle, as soon as I knew that really I wanted to come.

" I was aware of an interest a while ago and I was keen to come as long as I wasn't playing for Coventry. At that time though I thought that I was playing well enough in the reserves and training to get into the team. It wasn't until really the summer that the gaffer sat me down and said that I wasn't really in his plans and that he wanted to bring in new, fresh players that he wanted into the club. Which was fair enough, so I am glad that it has come off eventually.

" Keiren (Westwood) is a top lad, as soon as he came to the club really, he was shy at first but a great lad and a really top keeper. Even at Coventry he has been keeping Coventry in games where really we should have lost, but I think that he is destined for the Premier League really. He is a young goalkeeper, he is great, he is number one at Coventry and he is getting noticed already, so all the best to the lad because he is a great lad in general.

" I keep in contact with Keiren all the time, he is one of my best friends down there now. Really he was one of the main reasons, him and Marc Bridge-Wilkinson and Graham Kavanagh, one of the main reasons why I came to the club. Because I knew them, Jeff Smith as well, I knew them from playing in my past clubs for Port Vale. It was always a club that I was always looking out for even though I was playing for Coventry, because I knew that there was an interest, and as soon as the interest came in I was more than glad to come. "



" Everyone was not surprised really that Carlisle were at the top of the league, after their great heroics last season, so it came as no great surprise that they were up there. It is a rebuilding process now though, something went wrong and I think that they lost nine out of ten. That is really I think why the manager (John Ward) left. Greg Abbott has come in now though, I am glad really because he has brought me to the club.

" A rebuilding process but the confidence is great, I have just been training with the lads and even the gaffer said to me that the team spirit is getting back up there to what it was. It is just trying to plug out results, really where Carlisle were probably winning last time in the games where it was going for them, but now it is not going for them. So we really need to work hard and grind out results.

" For people who don't know my grandparents emigrated to Trinidad and Tobago for my grandad's job, they lived there and my mother was born there. She lived there until she was 16 or 17 so that is how I am eligible. When I was playing for Port Vale I got the call-up, that was some years ago now, I think that it was three our four years ago that I actually got the first call-up, and 35 caps later I just love playing for Trinidad.

" Sometimes it does jeopardise my league football, especially in League One it might come into contention where I might have to miss a game, but I will speak to the gaffer about that. I will never stop playing for Trinidad though because I have got so many great and fond memories and we did get to the World Cup, and hopefully again. Hopefully I can work with Carlisle and play for Trinidad as well. "



" I think that if I'm honest at the time you do block out playing in front of 65,000 people in the World Cup. Looking back now it was the best time of my life, hopefully it will happen again but it was an experience, it was the first time that the country had ever got there so the country was in euphoria. It was just brilliant, something that the country had never done.

" Hopefully do it again, playing in front of those kinds of crowds is just mind-boggling really and I don't appreciate what we did and what I did with Trinidad until I look back at it now, I just hope that it happens again. I scored the goal in the play-off in the home leg. We had a play-off against Bahrain to see who got to the World Cup, and I scored in the home leg which was an equaliser. Then we went to the away leg and Dennis Lawrence scored a header to get us there. So fond memories but it seems a while ago now.

" I am cup-tied for the Grays tie, I think that there is some ruling that says that if I am not registered for the first round, because I was at Coventry. I am trying to work with Coventry and the chairman (Ray Ranson) to, if we get through the first round for me to play in the second. I think that Coventry are hesitating on that one, but the gaffer is trying to speak to him today to see if we get through the first round if I will be able to play in the second, hopefully that will be the case.

" I can play all over the midfield, I could even play in behind whatever the gaffer plays upfront in the hole. So for club football I have been playing four or five years on the right-wing, for international I play centre-midfield and I play in behind. For me an old-fashioned winger really, I just like to run at defenders, get past them, work hard, track back and try to get a lot of goals.

" Because there is nothing better than scoring goals from midfield and plenty of assists from the wing. We'll see what happens, I just probably need a couple of games to get match-fit, and then after a couple of games I am always match-fit. Hopefully you will see the best of me after a couple of games. "