MY BOYS WIN THE TROPHIES THAT MATTER
Bradley: Forget the POTM awards.. you have to perform every week to claim titles
TITLE winning boss Stephen Bradley claims it is ‘incredible’ that none of his Shamrock Rovers stars have won a Player of the Month this season.
But he would rather they pick up the trophies that really matter rather than showing up sporadically throughout the year.
Bohemians’ have scooped the last four monthly Soccer Writers Ireland / SSE Airtricity awards through Georgie Kelly – twice – Ali Coote and Dawson Devoy.
Sligo Rovers’s Greg Bolger and Chris Forrester of St Pat’s were the early season winners with the October and November gongs still up for grabs.
But Bradley said: “It’s very easy to play for teams that are fourth, fifth or sixth and show up maybe every three or four weeks and catch someone’s eye.
“But to play, stand out and win games in a team that wants to challenge and win things, it’s a different ball game, a different pressure, a different stage.
“That’s what these players have done and I just felt they deserved a little bit more respect.
“For the team to win the league with three games left – I don’t know how many points we’ll do it by – but for not one of the players to get Player of the Month is incredible.
“The people picking it need to have a long, hard look at themselves, because it’s very easy to show up once every three or four weeks.”
Rovers clinched back-to-back titles after Friday’s 3-0 procession against Finn Harps in front of a 7030 crowd that invaded the pitch on the final whistle.
And Bradley is already turning his sights to winning three-in-a-row next season with planning for 2022 well under way since the summer.
The Hoops boss continued: “There’s a lot more to come from this group. We’ve been trying to build for a few years but every year our players are getting bought.
“That’s the nature of the beast. We don’t want too much change – we want to stay together, do better and, obviously, we want to add to it.
“The target has to be ‘can we make it three-in-a-row?’ We need to score more goals, concede less and lose less games next year. That has to be our aim.”
But Bradley hailed his current crop for dealing with the loss of Jack Byrne and Aaron Mceneff who were snapped up by APOEL and Hearts respectively last winter.
“The start (of the season) was the most worrying thing for me as we took 35 goals out of our team from last year, when you put in assists and goals,” he said.
“That’s very hard to replace. It was always going to be challenging to replace that early on, but, slowly but surely, we did that and when we got into our flow we were very good.”