Ross County goalkeeper Aaron McCarey’s career had hit the metaphoric road block.
On Saturday, he was the one erecting the impregnable barriers with a series of fines saves in the goal-less stalemate against Hearts.
Having made the most of injury to fellow keeper Scott Fox, McCarey - a summer 2016 recruit from Wolves - has now made eight appearances this season, and is well on his way to racking up his most outings in a campaign since featuring 11 times during the 2013/14 term.
Loan spells Walsall, York, Portsmouth and Bury failed to take off and the Irishman is delighted to be enjoying a sustained run of first team matches.
“The best feeling after a week’s work is 3pm on a Saturday,” said McCarey, who was given a four-month ban in 2015 for a failed drugs test while at Wolves.
“If you’re not playing you don’t feel apart of the team, you’re just there and you may as well be a supporter and have a season ticket.
“But I got my opportunity because of Scott Fox being injured and it’s like everything else, you have to take your chances when they come along.
“I played a lot for the Ireland Under-21s and we had a really good team, a lot of the lads have gone on to play for the senior team, guys like Shane Duffy, Robbie Brady, Jeff Hendrick, James McCarthy.
“I kind of went to a stand still but I’m happy to be playing in a competitive league with Ross County.”
McCarey’s ban two years ago was a low point. The player denied deliberately taking a non-performance enhancing substance.
“That was a tough time in my career,” he remarked.
“I never thought of quitting, absolutely not. If anything it inspired me even more to go on and prove a point, get my career back on track.
“It was a difficult time for me and my family, I had some dark days during the process.
“It was a tough time personally but I got great support from Wolves, they believed in me from day one.
“Kenny Jackett (then Wolves manager) was great with me, he was a great person to talk to and he gave me a lot of encouragement.”
McCarey was a busy man as Hearts racked up 23 attempts at goal at the weekend. The Monaghan-born player denied Isma Goncalves and Christophe Berra with two excellent saves on a busy afternoon.
Hearts defender Michael Smith, meanwhile, insists a fourth place finish in the Premiership is the least the Gorgie outfit should be aiming for despite their winless run stretching to five matches.
He said: “We are aiming to get into the top four, for a club like this we have to and we still believe we can get there.
“We have a run of home games and if we’d won it would have been good going into next week against Hamilton.
“We should have won 4-0 but the keeper made a couple of great saves.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here