David Sneyd

GO BACK TO the Shamrock Rovers 2023 title party on the pitch at Richmond Park.

A 2-0 victory away to St Patrick’s Athletics secured a fourth Premier Division crown in a row and confirmed Stephen Bradley’s place in club lore.

And yet, the Rovers head coach, while still drenched in champagne, acknowledged that his side’s slow start to that season should have been enough for one of their rivals to halt their dominance.

“There’s been people coming for us from all angles. And look, if any team was going to catch us, I think it was this year considering the start we had,” he said, referencing the fact the Hoops didn’t win any of their opening six games.

Rovers lost ground again early on in 2024, although this time the pace set by Shelbourne was enough to sustain their slump in the final couple of months of the campaign. Damien Duff – it already feels like an age since his departure from the scene – brought the Reds to Derry City on the final night needing to win. Rovers held up their part of the bargain at home to Waterford only for the news of Harry Wood’s late goal to permeate rapidly.

Now the challenge was for Rovers to respond, and the start of this season also highlighted the continued evolution on the European stage.

Bradley’s side had broken new ground last year by advancing through the league phase of the Uefa Conference League. They missed out on automatic progress to the last 16 on goal difference (two goals) which meant a two-legged knockout phase play-off with Molde.

Sandwiched in between those ties was a Premier Division opener with a difference – a Dublin derby with Bohemians played in front of a record 33,208 fans at Aviva Stadium.

Rovers won 1-0 away in Norway but then lost by the same score against Bohs three days later. Four days after that Molde forced the play-off to a penalty shootout, eventually dumping the home side out 5-4.

A 1-1 draw away to Shels followed before Sligo Rovers scored in the last 12 minutes to beat them 2-1 at the Showgrounds.

This was not how things were supposed to go, yet by the end of that first round of fixtures Rovers had recovered sufficiently. “I knew we were in a good place,” Bradley says.

With five games to go they need just one more point to regain the title. That could come tonight against Shels at Tallaght Stadium, where there only defeat this season was a 3-2 reverse to Bohs back in April.

As much as this season was about his players climbing back to the summit of the League of Ireland, there was also an expectation on Bradley to show he was capable of overseeing that.

“Pressure is irrelevant to answer this question. Pressure is leaving your son on an operating table, hoping he’s going to come through it. That’s pressure. Pressure is watching your son have chemotherapy in a room with 20 other kids that are really sick,” he says.

“I’m very comfortable with who I am, what I am, and how I manage. Can you lose your job? Yeah, it’s not pressure. It’s life. It’s fine. I’ve experienced real pressure. This isn’t pressure.

“Management is not pressure. If a manager comes out and tells you, ‘I feel stressed’. No, no. The only stress you should put on yourself is your standards and the standards of the group. That’s different. That’s just the standards of your working day and your life and everything you do. Win or lose games, for me it’s not pressure.”

Bradley’s son Josh was able to ring the bell to signal the successful end of his cancer treatment in Crumlin’s Children Hospital earlier this year, a journey that has changed his perspective and allowed him to avoid being consumed by his job.

“Yeah, at the start, you would. At the start, because you get so wrapped up in it. Definitely, it’s everything. There’s no doubt. I don’t want to throw that back flippantly, it’s not like that. I understand the question and there would be questions asked about me. When it goes well, you get plaudits, when it goes wrong, it’s on me. That’s the job as a manager. That’s life.

“When stuff happens in your life and you see real pressure, this isn’t pressure. I’ve been in St. John’s Ward carrying Josh to the treatment room then going to a game that night. What’s more important? What’s pressure? What people say or think, I couldn’t care less. It doesn’t affect me in any way, shape, or form. That’s not trying to be bravado, I really don’t care.

“It’s helped me become a better manager. Definitely helped me become a better manager. It’s definitely helped me. I don’t get the whole pressure thing. I don’t understand that about managers. Maybe they haven’t experienced real-life situations that have given them that perspective. I genuinely don’t feel pressure.”