Shamrock Rovers’ return
Both were tipped to become football’s ‘next big thing’ but both suffered personal tragedies. Now Stephen Mcphail and Stephen Bradley are using their experiences to rebuild Shamrock Rovers, Ireland’s most successful club
Why Irish eyes are smiling again
What Stephen Mcphail and Stephen Bradley have had to endure over the past two decades is a tale of glory and triumph, tragedy and despair. Both seemed destined for stardom and were praised or pursued by the Premier League’s top managers. But then came the brutal stabbing which almost took Bradley’s life, never mind career, while he was an Arsenal apprentice, and the cancer battle that shook former Leeds United prodigy Mcphail to his core – a battle that began in November 2009 and that, ultimately, he has been able to win. Mcphail, now 39, is the sporting director of Shamrock Rovers, Ireland’s most successful club, where he works in tandem with Bradley, 34, the Hoops’ head coach. They’re united by a desire to help change the landscape of Irish football by using their shared experiences for good.
Fourfourtwo meets the duo at the club’s training ground. The shared facility on the outskirts of Dublin, within the grounds of a social centre belonging to a national building company, belies the club’s ambitions.
There has been a significant seven-figure investment in facilities and operational costs in recent years, with an emphasis placed on a burgeoning academy that is spearheaded by former Rovers midfielder Shane Robinson.
The club is owned equally by its supporters and by multi-millionaire benefactor Ray Wilson, a Dublin-born Rovers fanatic who lives in Australia. Billionaire businessman Dermot Desmond, a prominent shareholder in Celtic, has also been strongly linked with a takeover to help take Shamrock to the next level.
And for much of this season, which runs from March to October, Rovers had been neck-and-neck with reigning champions Dundalk at
the top of the FAI Premier League, sparking hopes that a run of seven seasons without a major trophy would finally come to an end.
But if life has taught Mcphail anything, it’s that you should take nothing for granted.
His playing career started at Home Farm FC, just a few miles north of Dublin’s city centre. It’s the club where many of Ireland’s greatest footballers kicked off their careers, including Busby Babe and Leeds legend Johnny Giles, Liverpool captain Ronnie Whelan and Arsenal’s consummate playmaker, Liam Brady.
Indeed, former Leeds and Arsenal manager George Graham said Mcphail had “the best left foot since Brady” – the Mesut Ozil of his day, only more consistent and less infuriating – following Mcphail’s first-team debut as a 17-year-old in 1998.
Two Achilles injuries sustained in 2001 and 2002, right at the point when Mcphail’s career should have been on an upward trajectory, coincided with Leeds going into freefall.
He left Elland Road for Barnsley on a free transfer, which was followed by a move to Cardiff City in 2006, where he captained the team that reached the 2008 FA Cup Final with a 17-year-old Aaron Ramsey alongside him in midfield. But, late in 2009, Mcphail was diagnosed with lymphoma, a cancer which required 25 sessions of radiotherapy.
“When I first went in for treatment, I was spending time on a ward with kids,” recalls Mcphail (right). “That’s when you see how lucky you really are. I was still able to play football the week before for Cardiff in the Championship, and now I was beside a kid who was properly fighting for their life. That’s real perspective. My family were all telling me, ‘You’re not going to die, you’re not going to die’ – all I wanted was to be playing football, because football gave me the discipline to focus on something.” All of this gave the Republic of Ireland international a certain outlook on the fragile nature of success, and what he expects from a Shamrock Rovers player if this team is going to end its trophy drought. “So many things have to fall into place at the one time,” he says, “and you have to be ready to take your chance.” To illustrate his point, Mcphail fondly tells a story from his early days at Leeds in the mid-90s, not long before he was an 18-year-old in a team challenging for the Premier League title and a 21-year-old in the squad for a Champions League semi-final against Valencia. The club’s youth prospects – including Paul Robinson, Jonathan Woodgate, Harry Kewell and Alan Smith – lived together in dorms as part of the newly-built Thorp Arch training complex. “It was in the middle of nowhere and there was a prison across the road,” explains Mcphail. “Sometimes we would watch some of the prisoners be led in with their handcuffs to play.” The gates of Thorp Arch shut at 10pm and the squad’s curfew was strict, but in the week leading up the 1997 FA Youth Cup Final, players snuck out of the training ground. “Well, we jumped the big fence and we were caught on camera,” laughs Mcphail. “Paul Hart was in charge and he was raging. He didn’t take training with us for the week. Harry Kewell was in a suit jacket, trackie bottoms and flip-flops, but we all lied for each other. We didn’t give anyone up. We were like a mob. “The point is, you can have all the skill in the world, but you have to be able to stand up to being tested. We were constantly having our character tested; having grenades thrown at us by Hart and [first-team coach] Eddie Gray. Can you cope? Do you lie down when you’re being criticised, or do you say, ‘Fuck you, I’m going to have a go back’? “I know times change, and you have to respect that, but you have to try to keep the hunger; that desire to want to fight for everything. You aren’t given one first-team appearance or international cap. You have to earn it, and it’s the same here with Rovers. “At Leeds, we thought we’d win the Premier League when we were 19 or 20 years of age. Every day we had to be the best. That’s what we’re looking at here.” Across the table, Bradley is nodding his head intently, barely containing his excitement. “I love hearing that – the passion in Mac’s voice and the feeling he has,” Rovers’ head coach says, insistently. “We need to be properly educating
“GRENADES WERE CONSTANTLY THROWN AT US BY PAUL HART AND EDDIE GRAY”
our young players in Ireland before they move, to advise them about what’s coming their way. It’s too late doing it when they come back from England. We can help to rebuild their life, but in terms of preparing our young players to become professional footballers, we don’t do anything in this country. We’re trying to change that and provide a proper pathway. It’s nothing to do with ability – they have that. It’s about what’s in their heads.”
To say that Bradley is speaking from painful experience is something of an understatement.
A gifted, cultured midfielder, he was also tipped to be ‘the next Brady’. As has always been the way with Ireland’s best footballers, a move to Britain beckoned. But Bradley was extra special, and everyone knew it.
Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Gerard Houllier all flew to Dublin at various stages in 1999 to visit the 15-year-old and his mother, Bernadette, to convince them that their club was the place where all his dreams – everything his heart desired, to paraphrase Clive Tyldesley – could come true. And Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool is naming just a flew of the clubs who were interested.
“At the time I was just playing football for the joy of it, but I wanted to be the best,” says Bradley (right).
“I remember the day that Alex Ferguson came to the house. He’s probably the greatest manager we will ever see, and my mam was worrying because I wasn’t there.
“He was coming at six o’clock to take me and my mam for a nice meal in Dublin, and I was still on the street at a quarter to, playing with the lads. We had met him before and we knew that, as a working-class man from Glasgow, he was just like us. It wasn’t like my mam had all her best cakes ready for him. It was still a normal day. “Nowadays, I suppose kids would have it all over Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram. There was none of that around. But someone must have tipped people off where he was, because when we came out of the restaurant in town there must have been a thousand people waiting outside.” Despite Ferguson’s overtures, Bradley signed a professional contact with Arsenal at the age of 17, where Brady coached the youth team. But the ‘paradise’ of London sapped his hunger for the game, at a time when it should have been at its most ravenous. With his new-found wealth, Bradley was able to buy a nice house in London. He then purchased a watch that “cost more than a car”, and didn’t exactly keep quiet about it. Quite the opposite – he’d effectively marked himself as an easy target for his attackers. He was stabbed in the head following a break-in at his home. He tells FFT, “When I got stabbed, that was out of my control – but the stuff leading up to getting stabbed was under my control, and I should have seen that. I was told when I was young, not to buy my own house or move out. Liam [Brady] said it to me; Arsene [Wenger] said it. I ignored them. When you’re young and have money, you think you can do no wrong. You go out. You’re around the wrong people. The wrong people realised what I was doing, and then it happened.” Bradley was 19 at the time of the attack, and while he knew that he was on the way out at Arsenal – a move to Fulham had already been lined up – he used it as an excuse to make up for his own shortcomings, before eventually seeing the light. “Football turned into a job for me,” he explains. “I was clocking in and out and lost what had made me a player in the first place – I lost the touch and the feeling for a ball. The street wasn’t in me any more. I had more money than ever, I could go shopping all day, and I thought I was doing enough to be a professional footballer – but better players were coming along the conveyor belt and I was getting left behind. “You hate the world and you want to fight everyone. You think the world is against you and it owes you a favour. I was out for a year. I didn’t want to talk to Liam, Arsene – no one. I basically fucked football off. I didn’t want to know.
“I WAS ON A WARD WITH KIDS WHEN I FIRST WENT IN FOR CANCER TREATMENT”
“But once you process it and talk about it, try to understand it, it makes you a better person. You have clarity and can understand the reasons for why it happened.”
Bradley was determined not to let bitterness take hold, and, with the help of his late mother, he found himself on the path to managing Shamrock Rovers. He has been in the job for three years, and had the club properly challenging for the title for the first time since they were crowned champions under Michael O’neill in 2011.
Back then, it seemed as if Rovers were destined to begin a period of domestic domination. They won back-to-back League of Ireland titles and became the first Irish team to reach the Europa League’s group stages (their Tallaght Stadium hosted Harry Kane’s first Tottenham goal). But the money earned from that historic run seemingly came with a curse. After O’neill left to coach Northern Ireland, several managers were appointed and sacked – including Stephen Kenny, who will replace Mick Mccarthy as Republic of Ireland boss in 2020.
Clarity of purpose has returned to Shamrock Rovers over the past few years, with Bradley and Mcphail spearheading the charge while Robinson works diligently behind the scenes to create a production line of talent that can to help build a sustainable future.
That means the best will likely be cherry-picked by British clubs, as happened recently when Manchester City paid Rovers in the region of €500,000 for 17-year-old keeper Gavin Bazunu. One hopes he heeds Bradley’s advice about how to handle life as a Premier League player.
Even if Rovers finish 2nd behind Dundalk this year, there’s a growing sense of optimism that the best is yet to come, felt by the fans and the team, but perhaps most for all by Bradley and Mcphail.
“It feels like a different club now,” enthuses Bradley. “It felt old when we came in – tired, with no energy. We’ve tried to be bold, brave and change all of that, and bring in the right characters who are ambitious and hungry like us. We’ve decided to create things our way, and we believe it’s the right way.”