At Bournemouth’s compact stadium on Friday afternoon they were dusting down the impressive Micky Cave Cup for player of the season to present to Dominic Solanke, when from another corner of the ground the tall figure of Mark Travers emerged.
Travers and the Micky Cave Cup have history, with the Ireland goalkeeper having won the award himself in 2022. That honour, the awarding of a five-year contract off the back of Bournemouth winning promotion to the Premier League and the changing of his squad number from 42 to 1, suggested that Travers’s career was set fair, but then it hit stormy waters.
In the first month of the new season, Travers was the goal-minder when Bournemouth conceded three against Arsenal, four against Manchester City and nine against Liverpool, for a cumulative score of 16-0 over three games.
The Bournemouth manager, Scott Parker, said he was “not surprised” given the talent at his disposal and was promptly sacked. The fall-out continued. Travers was immediately dropped by the new manager, Gary O’Neil, and replaced by Neto, the Brazilian who had just been signed from Barcelona. With a new hand at the tiller, the ship steadied, and it looked like Travers might get left behind.
“It’s really tough, but you just try to bounce back as quickly as you can,” says Travers, reflecting on that difficult time. “You will hopefully play hundreds of games in your career and there are going to be a good few of them where you are going to look back and go, ‘Oh no’, but if the majority are solid and consistent then that’s all you can take from it. You have to just keep going and keep being positive and that is how you get back there.”
Travers has done so by the scenic route. He filled in for Neto when his fellow goalkeeper was injured or otherwise unavailable, but at the end of the season, Bournemouth signed another goalkeeper, the Romanian Andrei Radu.
Travers handed over his No 1 jersey to Neto and headed out on a season-long loan to Stoke City, where he performed well under Alex Neil. Well enough for Bournemouth to recall him early from loan back in October after another injury to Neto, but Travers still found himself on the bench and openly frustrated about having left first-team football behind him at Stoke.
“I was enjoying my time at Stoke, so to come back and not play was tough, but you can’t sulk for too long. With the amount of games on the schedule, there will be injuries and suspensions and other stuff will happen. If you are not ready for that moment when the manager calls you in, you’re only letting yourself down.”
Travers probably felt that the churn of managers at Bournemouth wasn’t helping him, but in fact the opposite was the case. The former Spain international Andoni Iraola had controversially replaced O’Neil and was watching Travers all the time. “He trains well,” Iraola said on Friday. “We were following him really closely when he was playing for Stoke, but whenever you are not playing you have to try to push the manager and try to make him think a lot in his decisions.”
Neto has been shaky of late — particularly culpable for Sheffield United’s two goals in a drawn game in March — and last month Iraola decided that Travers had done enough to play his first Premier League games of the season. The Kildare man turned 25 on Saturday and was hoping to celebrate with a fifth Premier League game in a row at Chelsea on Sunday. He has done well, making some good saves and coping impressively with the swirl of publicity which surrounded the controversial awarding of a penalty against him, when he was deemed to have tripped Kai Havertz, of Arsenal, who many people believed had duped him and the referee by deliberately trailing his leg. Worse things had happened to Travers in his career.
“There are going to be really challenging moments especially at this level in the Premier League where you get punished so easily. You have experienced that and you just learn and grow from that and push on.
“I just try to keep my head level and chat to my family and partner and other people close to me and not listen too much to what other people are saying. I stay away from it and I don’t read anything.”
Travers was an outstanding amateur golfer growing up in Kildare and he is looking forward to rekindling that passion over the summer, having had his appetite whetted last week by watching the PGA tournament from Valhalla, but firstly there are two Ireland internationals to look forward to next month. Again, the goalkeeping position is finely poised. Having taken the jersey from Travers towards the beginning of Stephen Kenny’s time as manager, Gavin Bazunu is now a long-term injury casualty, while Caoimhín Kelleher has again been back on the bench at Liverpool.
Shay Given warned again last week that Kelleher would have to move from Liverpool if he were to be Ireland’s No 1 and cited Travers as the main threat to him.
Travers sat on the bench for John O’Shea’s two games as interim manager in March against Switzerland and Belgium, but will be expected to feature against Hungary and Portugal next month. He joins the chorus of those players who believe that O’Shea has done enough to merit getting the job full-time as the FAI continue to stew over who to bring in as a replacement for Kenny.
“Definitely,” Travers replies, when asked whether O’Shea should be manager going into the Uefa Nations League match against England in September and beyond that into a World Cup qualifying campaign.
“In the March camp and working with John previously it was really good. The staff he brought in worked really well. We went toe to toe with two good countries and hopefully we will do that again in the June games to show what he can do. You look at his CV and how many games he has played for Ireland. Everybody has so much respect for him and what he has done. When he talks everyone listens because he is such a great person and leader to learn from as well.”
However, it is Iraola, who last week extended his contract until the end of the 2025-26 season, who will have greater bearing on Travers’ immediate future.
There are too many goalkeepers at the club — the former Ireland international Darren Randolph has not played a single game since arriving there in January of last year. So is Iraola putting Travers in the shop window or does he see him as first choice come the start of the next season?
“It’s very long term to know what we are going to do in the first game,” the manager said as I walked with him around the stadium on Friday. “I don’t know what decision we will make.”
Travers still has opportunities to make that decision a relatively easy one.
