Mark Travers was given his first start of the season in Bournemouth's clash with Forest Green Rovers in Wednesday night's second round Carabao Cup tie and it's fair to say he has left a good impression.
Many of us were quietly excited about the start of Bournemouth's Premier League campaign with hopes that the young Irish goalkeeper would be handed the no.1 goalkeeping spot for Eddie Howe's side.
Unfortunately, given Aaron Ramsdale's selection for the first three games of the season, he has had to be patient but when his opportunity came Travers turned out to be the hero, saving all three penalties in Bournemouth's shoot-out win over Rovers.
Speaking in his press conference after the game, Eddie Howe was delighted to hear the Bournemouth fans chanting Travers' name after the victory and he himself heaped praise on the youngster.
I love to see the supporters attached to the players and that support was great to see and fully deserved for Mark. He’s an outstanding goalkeeper.
He’s got every attribute you need and today he stood up, a great experience for him – how is he going to handle the shoot-out? Is he going to be able to make the difference? And he did and the three saves were top drawer.
It also seems Travers is very much still in the hunt for the no.1 spot, with Howe explaining that the Kildare native's hampered pre-season led him to go with Ramsdale at he start of the Premier League.
Of course he [Travers] was in my mind.
I think the difficulty for him is he picked up the thumb injury for Ireland, missed a lot of pre-season so I think we only saw him for the last two weeks and I think that then made it difficult.
I feel I hadn’t seen enough of him, he hadn’t trained enough for me to pick him ahead of Aaron, who I felt had a full pre-season, a very good pre-season so it’s great to have the competition, that’s what I want.It’s a difficult selection that position.
His fellow Irishman, Gavin Kilkenny, also started for Bournemouth on Wednesday night, in what was his senior debut. On the same day, the 19-year-old was announced in Stephen Kenny's squad for the upcoming U21 European qualifiers against Armenia and Sweden.
See Also: Stephen Kenny's U21 Squad Is Most Exciting Collection Of Irish Talent In Years
