A revival all about survival
Enda’s hunger is back
WHEN you’ve been to the last chance saloon, like Enda Stevens has, it makes days like yesterday feel that bit more special.
There he was on the Turkish coast, bombing up and down the left flank, getting crosses in and helping the Irish XI in orange bibs beat the Irish XI in white.
Not a bad first afternoon’s work on Irish senior duty.
It was affirmation of how far Stevens, 27, has come since a loan spell at Northampton Town in League Two was short-lived.
‘I’d been rejected by a League Two club and had to get my act together,’ recalled the Dubliner after training.
It took a while to seize his opportunity but when it came at Portsmouth in the summer of 2015, Stevens grabbed it. He had to, as there was no alternative.
‘It was my last chance saloon, definitely. If it didn’t work out there, I don’t know where I would have been,’ he said.
‘It was never in my mind to come home but it did cross my mind that I might have to come home. The phone wasn’t ringing. So, when I got the chance to go to Portsmouth I jumped at it.’
It helped that Paul Cook, then Pompey boss, knew what was needed to give Stevens’ career a kick-start.
‘Paul sat me down and said what he wanted from me and what he didn’t want.
‘He was excellent, he leaves all egos outside the door. He makes you work as hard as you can and when I went to Portsmouth, he got me as fit as I could be and my football benefited from it.’
‘When I went down to League Two I got that hunger back for the game. You see how much it’s worth to you, how hard you have to work to get back to where you want to be.’
Stevens (below) crammed in 90 games at Pompey in two seasons and helped the team back to League One, before sealing a move to a higher tier at Sheffield United in the Championship.
He has chalked up 37 games this season at wing-back, has helped the Blades push towards the play-offs, and won a call to arms to the Irish senior squad.
This version of Enda Stevens ’18 is not the one who landed a move from Shamrock Rovers to Aston Villa in January 2012. And he knows it.
‘Villa was a massive step up. It wasn’t that I wasn’t ready, I just didn’t appreciate it, I didn’t work as hard as I could to become an Aston Villa player.
‘I wasn’t good enough at the end of the day, I had to come away, down the leagues, to find that out.
‘Although I was at Villa and on loan at Doncaster, I didn’t really feel like I was playing the way I wanted to play. My football suffered, I wasn’t fit, I wasn’t enjoying it, my head wasn’t in the right place.
Spells on loan to Doncaster and Northampton, where Stevens did okay without rooting up too many trees, gnawed at him.
‘It got to my head a bit, you think you have made it but you are nowhere near making it,’ he said.
He is not flippant enough to think he has cracked the code but this season is going well and his first training session at senior international level was affirmation of the progress he’s made.
‘It’s been a good two years, the last two and a half years, this call-up was the icing on the cake. Hopefully I can do well this week and hang around,’ he said.
‘I knew I had to get to that level [Championship] to have a chance of being called up. Being honest, I wasn’t really expecting it so soon.’ Martin O’Neill likes to dabble with wing-backs, especially when he has a player or two over at training, as he did yesterday. Should he run with that strategy on Friday against Turkey in Antalya, Stevens will be ready.
‘I have played wing-back all season,’ he said.
‘It took me a while to learn the position. There is a lot more running but there is a difference positionally — you see a lot more of the attack, you are in the box a lot more.
‘I had pre-season to do that and we got off to a good start.’
With Stephen Ward rested and no natural left-footer among the full-backs, Stevens could be sprung into action this Friday. ‘It’s all about first impressions and hopefully I can make a good one.’
It helped that he finally scored his first goal for Sheffield United as well, against Burton last week.
‘It was a long time coming, the lads and coaches were on my case. The number of players who hadn’t scored was slowly disappearing, so the pressure is off now and I can relax.’
Another box has been ticked. It won’t be the last.
‘Villa was a massive step up but I just didn’t appreciate it’