SUCCESS IS A subjective term. It can mean different things to different people at various stages of their life.
And it is something former Ireland international striker Stephen Elliott knows all about.
Just over 10 years ago, Elliott was scoring a vital winner for Ireland against Cyprus to keep the country’s hopes of reaching the 2006 World Cup alive. The then 21-year-old was living his dream. Playing and scoring for Ireland.
Little did he know the great sense of relief that he would feel just to be able to play his club football back in Ireland in an EA Sports Cup match in front of 650 fans, just over a decade later.
But that’s the situation Elliott finds himself in, and he’s more than happy to adapt after joining League of Ireland First Division club Shelbourne in April. He just wants to be back playing football again.
The 32-year-old forward has suffered several injury setbacks in the last three years and he has struggled to play football on a regular basis over that period. The path to full fitness has been a tough one.
“I got a knee injury at the end of my time with Coventry [in 2013]. I was out of contract and without a club, but I was meant to be back playing in few weeks, but it never seemed to heal. After nine months of rehab, I went to see a specialist in London to get to the bottom of it,” Elliott tells The42.
“I was thinking is this is ever going to get better? At that stage I was 29, I was supposedly going to be in my prime and all of a sudden my career was being taken away.
“I wasn’t able to go in and train or play anywhere. I was into the unknown a bit. I have a young family and I was beginning to think should I stick with this or just give up?
“I found it difficult, especially in my head; I felt I should still be playing. I felt angry.
“In the end I invested out of my own pocket to get the injury right and managed to get back playing, and I was delighted, albeit in League Two with Carlisle, a level I never played before.
“It was a financial burden, but a path I chose to go down. For me, football is all I know and when it’s taken away from you, it’s very difficult.”
After a full season without a club Elliott was signed by his former international and Sunderland teammate Graham Kavanagh at Carlisle United, but his injury woes were to continue.
“I got back playing with Carlisle but then my Achilles snapped and that was a really low moment, and I was thinking what’s the point?” he says.
“I was ready to stop playing but I had two surgeries and something told me to keep going, and now I’m back playing. For me now, it’s about enjoying my football.”
The former Belvedere man has always tried to maintain a positive outlook, no matter the difficulties he has faced.
He sees Ireland as the perfect place for his wife and his four children to settle, and his time away from the football pitch has taught him to have a plan in place for when he finally decides to hang up his boots.
“When you’re with a club, you wake up every morning and play football – you’re told what to do, when to sleep, what to eat. You have the craic with the lads in the dressing room. When that’s taken away from you, it’s hard to accept. It’s a hard void to fill. You never think it’s going to end.”
“Although it feels like I’ve been through a post-playing stage. At this moment in time I feel I have a couple of years left.”
Elliott, who won the Scottish Cup when his Hearts side hammered Pat Fenlon’s Hibernian 5-1 in the final, hopes to continue to earn his coaching badges and to move into management when he finally decides to retire from playing.
Having worked with the likes of Kevin Keegan and Mick McCarthy, he has a lot of managerial experience to draw on from his playing career.
And although it was Keegan that gave Elliott his full debut in England at Manchester City, it was the former Ireland manager that gave Elliott his first real break in the first-team with Sunderland.
“Mick is a real player’s manager. You knew you had to go out and perform for him. He doesn’t have time for people who slack, you have to work hard. I grew up at Sunderland and started to realise what first-team football was about.
“If you’re a good man-manager you able to keep a squad happy, and Mick for example was really good at keeping everybody happy. And if he needed some of the squad players for a game, they would be ready to jump in for him.
“I remember he took me out of starting line-up, at the time I was probably fuming, but he knew what was best for me, I was only 20, and he was only looking after my development.”
After earning promotion from the Championship in 2005, with Elliott scoring 15 goals along the way, McCarthy was eventually sacked as the Sunderland manager the following season as the club struggled at the foot of the Premier League table, as injuries prevented Elliott from playing as much as he would have liked.
The man to replace McCarthy took everybody by surprise.
“We came back for pre-season, but we had no manager for the whole of pre-season. It was a bit mad. Niall [Quinn] was taking the team, but you could tell he didn’t want to be the manager and I felt he just did it for the love of club.
“We lost our first four league games. There was a lot of uncertainty around the club. Going around the town in Sunderland, you wouldn’t want to leave your house.
“We then lost to Bury in the League Cup and our fans booed us off the pitch at Gigg Lane. Niall came into the dressing room distraught, we were all really low. We were all thinking what’s going on?
“The next day he said we are going to get a big name as the manager. When Roy Keane was announced it was a big shock.
“I had recently played with Roy and everybody wanted to know what he was like. I didn’t know him that well; I was a young lad in the Ireland team at the time and I just tried to keep my head down.
“To say he had a massive impact would be an understatement. He made some really good signings and he brought in some really good characters and managed to get Sunderland back in the Premier League.”
Keane had only announced his retirement from playing in June 2006, and was now the manager of Sunderland just over two months later. It seems though his desire to dictate a game on the pitch, rather from the sidelines, has never really left the former Manchester United captain.
“I remember one time we had a training game before a match, seven versus seven. I think the game was nil-all. I think he was hiding behind a tree somewhere, so he came down, and told one of the players to get off the pitch and ended up playing himself, and I think he scored a hat-trick. He had really high standards.
“When he speaks the whole football world hangs on every word he says. He’s a born winner. He’s still only a young man and can’t see why he can’t be a successful manager again – especially after working with Martin O’Neill.
And Elliott may well have a special place in the mind of Keane, after he scored an 80th minute equaliser for Sunderland against McCarthy’s Wolves in the Championship, as the two came face-to-face for the first time since Saipan.
Elliott, who also won the League One title while on loan at Norwich City, is in a good a position as anybody to assess the current state of the League of Ireland from an outside perspective, having played in every division in England from the Premier League to League Two as well as the Scottish Premiership with Hearts.
“The League of Ireland isn’t in a great state. The money is not going back into the league to make facilities better. I think the FAI could do more to advertise it, but it’s up to the people as well to come and watch the games.
“I think you have to do something different at the games. What can they do to get more families to matches? Are Friday evenings the right time to get more families in to watch games?
“Surely there is a way to improve it. I’m no expert, but there are some good players in the league, and if we could get people watching it we could make it a bigger brand. These lads could improve even more, some young players may thrive on big crowds.”
But Elliott feels simple steps could be taken to help the development of the players in the league.
“The majority of lads at Shels are quite young and they ask me what it was like in England. I know if I was young lad I’d be the exact same. They just want to improve.
“I can pass on things that I may have done better in my career. But they need to have people around the clubs to pass on information to go to the next level.
“I don’t see the link between the young lads in the league and the national team. I can’t see the league improving until a proper plan is put in place.”
“The better the league, the better the national team will be. If the league improves it can only help football in this country. Are they [the FAI] going to sit back now after the Euros and just think that’s grand the fans are back onside there are no problems here?
“We need to do more for the league and national team, look at Wales, we can produce players just as good as them. Anybody can win these major competitions.”
There are plans in place to expand the national underage leagues to create a pathway for the best schoolboy players to move on and play competitively in the League of Ireland and Elliott sees this as a good idea, but that you can never have a one-size-fits-all approach.
“Maybe instead of players going away at 15 or 16 they can stay here longer, and the compensation they get, if they move, can only help the league. But there’s no right or wrong to do it, everybody is different. But if you’re good enough you can develop anywhere.”
“John O’Shea stayed to do his Leaving Cert [before moving to Manchester United]. There’s no harm having more education, it’s a young age.
“I really enjoyed my time at Manchester when I first went over as a young lad. You grow up and start to become a man; you have to do that early when you play football. You soon realise it’s a big bad world out there.
“But it was good for me because we had a few Irish lads in the City youth team, players like Glenn Whelan, Paddy McCarthy, Willo Flood, Stephen Paisley.
“It was really enjoyable growing up with them and we still look out for each other now. And to train with the likes of Nicholas Anelka, Robbie Fowler, Paulo Wanchope was a brilliant learning experience.
“I look at my kids, my oldest is 12 and, look Jesus, he could go away in three or four years, would I want that for him? For young Irish lads when I was growing up, going to the UK was the only route.”
Elliott watched the European Championships this summer, like the rest of us – as a fan. There are no lingering thoughts of what may have been if things worked out a different way.
“I played nine times for my country, it’s something nobody can take away from me and something I’m very proud of, in my opinion there’s no bigger achievement.”
“To be sharing a dressing room and learning from people like Damien Duff, Robbie Keane, Kevin Kilbane and Roy Keane was an unbelievable experience.”
Elliott, went on to play 65 minutes in that EA Sports Cup tie against Bohemians, with Shels progressing to the next round on penalties.
Tolka Park may have felt a long way from Lansdowne Road or the Stadium of Light, but for Elliott he was able to be a footballer again, and for him on a personal level, that was a success in itself.
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