THE CONVERSATION WAS a straightforward one.
There was no need to shout or scream or tear strips off the walls. Even if, inside, Chris Wilder felt as though he was ready go through Enda Stevens for a shortcut in order to make his point.
“But that’s not how you get through to him,” the Sheffield United manager explains to The42 of their relationship, one which stretches back six years to when they first worked together at Northampton Town.
“You don’t have to bark at Enda for him to respond. I don’t think I’ve ever had to bark at Enda. Even now, he is a leader in our dressing room but he is calm, you know you can trust him.”
As they sit sixth in the Premier League, Wilder and Stevens are making headlines together. A win against Bournemouth this afternoon (Sunday) and they will move to within two points of Chelsea in the fourth Champions League spot.
For context, Sheffield United have never qualified for Europe in their 131-year history.
Stevens has played all 2,250 minutes of their 25 top-flight games this season – pipping his Republic of Ireland team-mate at Bramall Lane, John Egan, by 101 minutes. He is just one of 19 ever presents in the Premier League and has featured more than any other Irish player.
Stevens turns 30 this summer and, a decade after he was making his way in the League of Ireland while delivering pizzas part-time in his prized jet-black Honda Civic, he is currently one of the most accomplished, athletic and consistent left backs in the game.
Wilder, too, has journeyed to this point by breaking down barriers and stereotypes. He was manager of Oxford United in the Conference Premier at the same time as Stevens was finishing up with St Patrick’s Athletic, and his job with Dominos, before joining Shamrock Rovers full time.
Their paths in the game crossed for the first time in October 2014 when Wilder, then in charge of Northampton, needed a left back on an emergency loan. So, Stevens, by this point a Premier League player with Aston Villa, spent a month under his guidance.
It was enough time for Wilder to see something special and feel compelled to make an intervention. The end of the loan was the perfect time for the conversation that changed everything, one which was delivered with sober realism and genuine concern, helping to sharpen Stevens’ focus by making him look within himself to decide what he wanted for his future.
“It was very frank. He was with us for the month and it was so obvious that he had quality,” Wilder recalls. “It stood out, just that undoubted quality and ability. But I felt as if he was doing it for us in second gear, it was as if he was playing within himself and afraid to let loose, he was holding back and we wanted him to open up, to stretch out those legs and show us how much more was there.”
It is a point Paul Cook, the man Stevens and those close to him will attest to having a profound influence when he signed him as a free agent following his release by Villa in 2015, backs up.
You will never hear a person say a bad word about Enda,” Cook, now manager of Wigan Athletic in the Championship, says as he begins the early morning drive to training on a bitterly cold Thursday morning when the sky is still filled with darkness.
“Enda is such a lovely lad and to be honest, being such a lovely lad was probably one of the things that was stopping him from going on in football. He needed to develop a ruthless nature, a ruthless style, an aggressive style.
“That’s not kicking people or doing stupid things on the pitch. That’s aggression in his play. That’s getting forward quicker, that’s crossing the ball with more anger in the cross, little bits of devilment in his game. They call it an edge in football and Enda was playing without an edge…”
“I told him all this,” Wilder continues, taking up the story and returning to that one-one-chat in Northampton six years ago.
Stevens’ loan was coming to an end, a second temporary spell with Doncaster Rovers beckoned and there was a sense of drift.
“I asked him; ‘what are you doing with your career? Where is your career going? What do you need from it and what do you want from it?’ Basically, ‘what are you doing to make it happen for yourself?’
“Some don’t grasp that moment, they don’t get it, or they don’t want to get it,” Wilder adds. “It goes over their heads or they don’t take it in. That’s fine, but Enda took it in.”
…
They had their routine down to a tee. Four cans of cider between them, bunk on the Luas red line at Drimnagh and travel the five stops to Kingswood.
It is 2007 and Enda Stevens and Ciaran Fadden are best friends in Templeogue College. They have just started going out with two girls from the same road in Tallaght, so the regular journeys begin and some Dutch courage (not Gold) is needed.
“All these years later and Enda is still with Sinead, he’s getting married and has a beautiful daughter. I lasted about a month with the other one,” Fadden laughs.
They are still thick as thieves now, even if their first encounter was hardly friendship at first sight. “He was 1st Year and I was 2nd Year. He had the mullet, he used to straighten that thing constantly. I remember saying to him when I saw him ‘I bet you’re a good footballer. I bet you even wear Calvin Klein jocks’. And he did an’ all!”
Their relationship blossomed. Stevens had his Honda Civic, “his baby, his pride and joy” by 16 and would endeavour to pick Fadden up in time for the first bell in school. It didn’t always happen. Sometimes he would just sleep in or, if they were late, they’d head down the Belgard Road for a Burger King or McDonalds to talk about much more important things.
Like football.
They travelled to Paris together with friends Paddy Stewart and Lee Ennis for the second leg of Ireland’s infamous World Cup play-off with France.
“We all ended up on top of each other about five rows down when we celebrated Robbie Keane’s goal. The bruises are still there I’d say. It was crazy. It was only the next day in an Irish pub that we realised it was a handball,” Fadden reveals.
“So, to think of those moments we shared following Ireland, just all growing up together, it’s surreal to see him where he is now. It makes you so proud.”
Stevens, now Ireland’s first choice left back, could be walking out in Aviva Stadium at Euro 2020 this summer.
You wonder what they must think of his rise in Templeogue College. It was not a football school and, while he was not even from a football family – he played Gaelic and hurling, his father’s first love – it was with a ball at his feet that he focused his energies.
Stevens helped Templeogue reach a Leinster football final as his time there came to an end and, a few days later, he was part of the Gaelic team that also reached a Leinster showpiece.
“We lost both finals,” Fadden chuckles.
But there were still guiding lights in the school, like English teacher Milo O’Shea who took charge of the football team, and recently met his former pupil after his Premier League game away to Tottenham Hotspur. As Stevens and his Templeogue teammates prepared to venture into the real world, O’Shea’s description of the talented Drimnagh native in an end-of-season report has borne fruit.
“Balance and poise couple with tremendous vision, Enda is the complete footballer. Pitched on a barbwire fence in Baghdad, Enda would take it all in his stride. Has a bright future ahead of him.”
Cook and Wilder are quick to agree. “He deals with things that come at him and doesn’t hide, it’s why he is one of the leaders in our dressing room by his actions rather than just words,” the latter says, with the Liverpudlian adding: “Nothing fazes him, knock him down he’ll get back up and keep going.”
Stevens might never have needed to prove his credentials in Iraq, but he has overcome his own obstacles to reach the stage he currently thrives on. Personal tragedy and professional hardship have been dealt with head on both at home and in England.
His eldest sister, Elaine, suffered with Friedreich’s Ataxia, a disease which attacks the nervous system. She was 12 when the feeling in her legs went. Stevens was eight and well aware of what was happening. It wasn’t something hidden away.
But as they both grew older, he watched as his big sister began to lose her balance, the use of her arms; he watched as her sight and breathing was attacked. Elaine got every ounce of joy from life that she could before eventually her whole body shut down.
She passed away just three days after he had signed his three-and-a-half-year contract with Villa in late August, 2011. The funeral was later in the week, the same day as Richard Dunne’s legendary display for Ireland against Russia and that brought just the briefest of respite from the grief as family and friends gathered to watch in the Red Cow.
Dublin’s All-Ireland win courtesy of Stephen Cluxton’s last-minute point provided another another poignant memory.
Stevens remained at home until the January before beginning his new life in Birmingham but Elaine’s loss, coupled with partner Sinead (he has a second sister also named Sinead) remaining at home rather than moving took its toll.
The well-told story at this point, one which Stevens acceps, is that he wasn’t doing enough to make the grade at Villa – despite seven first-team appearances before beginning his travails on loan.
But there were deeper struggles to contend with – grief, loss and isolation – and his experiences at places like Doncaster, Northampton and then Portsmouth on a permanent basis helped mould him into what he has become: a genuine Premier League and Ireland star.
But long before he had to deal with such struggles of forging a life for himself and his family, everything seemed much simpler in Dublin.
“He used to rock up for training in Ballyfermot on his scrambler,” Keith Ward, his former Cherry Orchard team-mate, beams.
The pair progressed from schoolboy level to begin their League of Ireland careers together with UCD, and while they went their separate ways in the game, they grew closer away from it.
He had an apartment in Cabra that was passed down in the family. I had the spare room and he charged me 50 quid a week. Can ya believe that? My landlord he was! And he was on the big bucks at Rovers at the time, he’d do anything for a bit of money that lad,” Ward teases.
“We were both full-time, I would train with Dundalk at 10 in the morning. He trained later in the afternoon and we’d be up all hours of the night playing Fifa. I’d be dying in the morning, come home from training in the afternoon and he’d be still asleep. He’s the laziest man ever, an absolute sleeping bag.”
That fondness for a nap almost cost him dearly while on a European trip with Rovers. Former team-mate Pat Flynn can’t recall the exact game, or the date, but he will never forget Stevens’ face as he sheepishly traipsed down the aisle of the plane after staff were forced to re-open its doors when he was eventually found.
“We had a stop-over, I think it was Germany or somewhere like that, and he’d fallen asleep somewhere by himself. We were all on, so were all the other passengers cause it wasn’t a charter or anything like that.
“Now Enda could be ditsy at times so when we realised it was him that was missing no one was surprised. There was panic but they found him and opened the doors for him…
“Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me at all,” Ward adds. “When we lived together, I don’t mind saying it, ask anybody and they will tell you it was like the two dumbest people who could live together.
“I don’t know how this was possible but if one things sums us up it was the day we locked the house keys in his car and the car keys in the house. Only we could do that. We were getting ready to go out for the night and there we were standing there like two eejits waiting for his sister to come over with the spare keys.”
By the time he was flatmates with Luke McCullough during his loan period with Doncaster, Stevens had, well, a bit more cop on. McCullough, from Portadown, had come through the ranks with Manchester United and was attempting to find his own way in the game.
Stevens could relate, as he realised his days at Villa were numbered. The two self-confessed film geeks would spend their spare time in the local cinema. “Watching anything to kill time,” McCullough recalls.
“It’s a funny one because you get really close to some lads in football over the space of a few months and then they’re gone or you’re gone and you never talk again, you don’t see each other, that’s just how it is.
“Enda is different, he has stayed in touch.”
McCullough played his first game in 19 months earlier this week for Tranmere Rovers, after a knee injury robbed him of so much time. He is on non-contract terms with the club and, while Stevens’ career trajectory has taken a different direction, the mutual respect is evident. “He’ll get in touch and check up to see how things are going, he doesn’t just forget you,” McCullough adds.
It’s a trait that Cook, who attended Stevens’ daughter’s christening in Dublin last year, saw up close and personal.
He has an interest in other people’s careers and their lives. There are so many people delighted to see him do so well and develop into a top-class Premier League and international player.
“In a lot of football clubs, the manager can be close to players. That’s how I like to be,” Cook, the former Sligo Rovers boss, continues. “Some are different. I think it’s important to know players’ families and about their lives.
“Enda has Sinead and the little un. He’s surrounded by fantastic people, a fantastic family. Being there for the christening and being around them all, it just opens your eyes to that.”
Stevens and his partner named their daughter Bella Elaine, the poignancy of which is clear, and it is through his exploits on the pitch that he can now provide for this family of his own. “There comes a time when lads need to stand up and take responsibility for their own careers,” Cook insists.
“Talent alone will get you nowhere. There are academy lads in England and it’s just… Enda came over and got his big move from Shamrock Rovers. It didn’t work, he could have finished up and said it wasn’t to be but sometimes having that little bit of hurt is good for a lad’s hunger.
“There were was a realisation with Enda when he was at Portsmouth about what he needed to do to start his career again.”
It’s something Chris Wilder has felt the benefit of ever since, but if it wasn’t for the encouragement of Paul Keegan at Doncaster things could have turned out so differently when Portsmouth, then in League Two, expressed their interest.
“From the outside, you probably look at it and think the Premier League is this untouchable place in some ways. But he started at Villa and ended up in League Two with Portsmouth in the space of three years, so Enda knows nothing is certain,” Keegan begins.
“He realises how quickly things can change or be taken away, I think having that fear in you of realising that drives you on even more.
He is showing his class now every week in the Premier League but it will still be there in the back of his head about what he has already been through to get back there. I remember when he came and had a chat with me when the chance to go to Portsmouth was there.
“He wasn’t sure what to do, he didn’t think moving to League Two would be good or moving to the other end of the country. I told him that Cookie would be great for him. The style of play, attacking, energetic, it was perfect. And the type of manager Cookie is you can’t help but love the game with him.”
If Paul Cook provided the love, captain Michael Doyle, another Dubliner and Cherry Orchard alumnus, instilled just a little bit of hate to drive him on across the white line. Their families remain close now and discussion never strays far from football.
“Behind the nice fella and the lad who is good craic there is someone really determined and who understands what he wants,” Doyle says. “Things have clicked for him, in his head and on the pitch. I think he realises what he wants from his life.
“You hear so many sob stories now of lads who go to England, go through some of what Enda went through, when it’s not nice off the pitch and you’re away from people you love, your family who care about you when you think no one else around you does, you hear how bad it all is when they come back, all the bad stories.
“Enda has those stories but it just dropped with him. I know he had that chat with Chris Wilder, where it was basically put up to him about what he wanted to achieve in his life. There can be so many weak-minded people in football who wouldn’t have taken that conversation well and gone the other way.
“So what Enda is doing now, the rewards he is getting by playing in a top Premier League side and getting into the Ireland team, that’s down to him. The lower leagues can be demoralising, trust me, I know, but you have to love it to keep going through the grind of it. I love it and Enda does too.
“He fights through injury; dead legs, tight hamstrings, knocks all over the body. He has the attitude of never wanting to come out of the team, always being available.”
A mantra he has continued into the Premier League with Sheffield United this season, an ever-present without missing a second of action.
“There were no doubts about his ability to step up from the Championship,” Wilder continues. “You challenge Enda and he’ll rise to it. He’ll face it and enjoy it. He’s out there now after training most days doing more work, getting better and improving. You can trust him. That’s the professional he is.”
That’s Enda Stevens.
