'Demoralised' Brandon Haunstrup: Why I had to quit Portsmouth for Kilmarnock

Brandon Haunstrup admits he had to quit Pompey for the sake of his career.
Brandon Haunstrup has quit Pompey for Kilmarnock in search of regular first-team football. Picture: Joe PeplerBrandon Haunstrup has quit Pompey for Kilmarnock in search of regular first-team football. Picture: Joe Pepler
Brandon Haunstrup has quit Pompey for Kilmarnock in search of regular first-team football. Picture: Joe Pepler

The switch to the Scottish Premiership club offers regular first-team football, having become demoralised under Kenny Jackett.

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Since his Blues debut in August 2015, Haunstrup has totalled 57 appearances and one goal, while was overlooked for the last 14 squads of the 2019-20 campaign.

And that persuaded the Pompey fan from Waterlooville to drive an exit from the club he had served since the age of seven.

Haunstrup told The News: ‘Kilmarnock is a fresh new start.

‘I hadn’t kicked on in the last few years. I hadn’t reached where I wanted to be or achieved the goals I desired. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to do that at Pompey.

‘For the sake of my career, I had to leave. If I want to have a successful career and play games – this is what I had to do.

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‘Looking back, 57 appearances, with 32 in the league, is not good enough. I want to play a lot more than that – and knew I’d have to leave to do it.

‘I’ve spoken to the manager (Jackett) quite a lot about it over the last year. I remember a spell of seven games early in the season when Brownie was injured. I thought I did pretty well.

‘As soon as he was fit, the gaffer said “I’m going with Brownie this weekend at Doncaster”. There was no real explanation. I’m thinking “What have I done wrong?”.

‘It meant when I next got a little run, in my mind if I made one mistake then I was coming out of the team.

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‘There was no real confidence that I would play a few matches in a row because I’d still be left out after a few good games. It was demoralising.

‘My Pompey career here could go no further, which is obviously devastating, it’s my home town.

‘But it was definitely time to move on.’

Haunstrup recovered from a minor knee operation to declare himself fit at the turn of the year.

However, he would feature just twice for the Blues in 2020, with Steve Seddon and Lee Brown preferred at left-back.

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The former Crookhorn College pupil’s final outing for the club was in a Leasing.com Trophy 2-1 victory over Scunthorpe on January 21.

He added: ‘My job is football, my job is to play football. I do all this work in the week, training and in the gym, looking after myself.

‘Yet, at the same time, I have no reason for doing so because I know I’m not going to be playing at the weekend. It has been demoralising.

‘There comes a time in every player’s career that if you’re not playing, you need to self-evaluate and say “What’s the next best step for me?”.

‘This was it.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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