LUKE Southwood reckons he has reached the stage of his career where he can embrace the challenge of competing for one spot in the team at Wanderers.

One of three senior keepers in Ian Evatt’s squad, the Northern Ireland international has been signed from Cheltenham Town as a direct rival for last season’s first choice, Nathan Baxter, and his back-up, Joel Coleman.

Southwood had been first choice for the last two seasons at Whaddon Road and for much of the last year he spent at Reading but now feels at 26 he can handle the different pressures of coming to Bolton and proving himself once again.

“It’s a different environment for me but I feel like I am ready for it,” he told The Bolton News. “All the goalkeepers here are pretty experienced, we know how it works being a goalkeeper at a club and all gunning for one spot.

“I was number two at Reading for just over a year, supporting the goalie who was there, Rafael Cabral, and when I got my chance, the roles reversed, and he supported me. That is what it has to be like in this position.

“My mindset is on proving what I can do, getting that opportunity, but also offering any help and assistance I can give to the other goalkeepers at the club.”

That Southwood has more than 200 games to his name in his mid-twenties is down to some successful loan spells during his time at Reading.

He had gone right the way through the youth system with the Royals but had rarely been content with playing development football, seizing opportunities with Bath City and Eastleigh which both ended with individual honours. Before Covid, he got the chance to play top-flight football in Scotland with Hamilton and made his debut against Rangers.

Eventually the first team breakthrough game with Reading and he was handed a debut by manager Veljko Paunovic against Fulham on the final day of the 2020/21 season.

But Southwood looks back on the time he spent away from Reading as a major learning experience in his career.

“I’d been at Reading for years so those first couple of loans were big steps,” he said. “Getting men’s football experience is brilliant for any young goalkeeper. That stood me in good stead to break into the team and when it happened it was brilliant to pull on the shirt of the club I’d been at for so long, it was a great time, and I learned a lot.

“Very rarely you’ll get a goalkeeper who comes through a club’s academy and then into a first team ready to play regular football right away. Even if you are one of those keepers, it can be really difficult t adjust if you haven’t been out on loan, understood what the game is all about.

“It’s a right of passage as a goalie, you need the experience of men’s football with three points on the line, people’s bonuses and it means a lot to everyone, whereas in the academy that sort of thing isn’t as important.”

Cheltenham proved to be the fourth loan of Southwood’s career, and eventually the next stepping stone in a permanent move away from his boyhood club.

At League One level the Robins were perpetually battling against bigger budgets, a quest which eventually ended in relegation last season. But Southwood is proud of the time he spent with the Robins, and in particular the mid-table finish them managed in 2022/23.

“There were some great memories there,” he said. “I know it didn’t finish the way I wanted it to, or any of us did, but I can’t say anything bad about Cheltenham, the way the club is run or the people there, it is a really great place. The two years I had there were probably my biggest in football in terms of gaining experience.

“It’s us against the world at Cheltenham, that’s the attitude they adopt and everyone gets behind it. We weren’t expected to win any game, let alone stay in the league.

“Everyone buys into that and when it comes off it’s really good.”

Now a Wanderer, Southwood is enjoying working with Matt Gilks, a goalkeeper coach only a couple of seasons removed from his own playing career, which ended with Bolton.

“Gillo is brilliant, as soon as I joined, I had a phone call with him and I was on board with everything he was talking about, it was very similar to the way I see the game,” he said. “We’re both massively into the goalkeeping side of gym work, basically how our job is different to the outfielder, and we need to be doing different things.

“We’re all part of the team but we have a completely different role to the other players on the pitch. Gillo obviously understands that, knows it down to a tee, and he didn’t finish playing that long ago so I’ve really tried to extract as much information from him as possible. He has some great experience in the game, and it isn’t easy to find.”

Away from club football, Southwood has also set himself another challenge, and that is to add to the solitary cap he currently has for Northern Ireland.

He made his debut in March 2022 against Luxembourg and has been involved in virtually every international squad over the last couple of years, save for those played in the summer as he recovered from a fracture in his leg, sustained on the final day of last season.

With Northern Irish eyes already fixed on how Bolton fare, Southwood hopes by impressing at his new club there could be new opportunities under Michael O’Neill, whose young squad soon start their Nations League campaign and a build towards the World Cup.

“When I am here I’ll be concentrating purely on Bolton but I know the better I do here, the more chance I have to get the number one shirt there for Northern Ireland,” he said. “It’s a collective goal.

“We know their people will be watching our games with Eoin Toal and Dion Charles here already, so there’s maybe even a better chance for me.

“I have been in every squad, barring the summer where I had my injury, for maybe two years now. The games have been qualifiers, so it hasn’t been easy to get the minutes and break into it.

“Everyone there, and if you watch our games, you can see the potential in the squad, especially in spells of games. There are some great young lads coming through, especially Conor, who people at Bolton will know well – he’s outstanding.

“But you only get maybe two weeks at a time with each other, then two games back-to-back, so to get that to knit together isn’t an easy thing. I know I am, but I am sure the lads are confident as well that when we get that knitted together it’s a team that can compete and try to qualify.

“When we qualified for the Euros it almost looked like a club team, a group of lads who’d played together every week for two years, and that’s the challenge in international football. But there’s no doubt there is enough quality there to compete and hopefully qualify for those tournaments again.”

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