STEPHEN BRADLEY GOT away from Ireland and, most importantly, his phone over the winter.
The Shamrock Rovers boss also ordered his players to take a full seven-week break after winning the League of Ireland Premier Division for a fourth season in a row.
He barred the whole squad from returning to their Roadstone training base until he said so.
“I wanted them away from here, I wanted them away from each other, I didn’t want any contact with them, but there was nothing, it was completely shut up. I felt it was needed for them,” he says.
Bradley was able to enjoy time away with his family and find refuge where, as he says himself, “my phone wasn’t working so I had real time to think about things, think about everything. It gave me a real chance for reflection and to try and understand how I can improve.
“Honest reflection can be hard for people but if you understand how to do it and are in that space it can be really helpful. It definitely gave me a chance to sit down and think about what happened on and off the pitch.”
Bradley was vocal at the end of last season about issues around the club that were frustrating him. It was not a guarantee that he would return ahead for this campaign but, ahead of the opener with Dundalk at Tallaght Stadium on Friday, he is primed for another year at the helm with a historic fifth successive title the aim.
“We want to be the team that has done it,” he says. “There is no getting away from that. Five, six, seven, can we do it? I don’t know, it’s going to be hard.”
Bradley won’t celebrate his 40th birthday until November but this will be his eighth full season in charge of Rovers.
While the winter gave him a chance to refocus without access to his phone, might he have missed a call from the FAI in their search for a new senior men’s manager?
“No, never spoken to about the job. It’s hard to comment from the outside looking in, it seems like hopefully they have Lee Carsley but no, I have never been spoken to,” he says.
“I’m not naive or silly, I understand people’s opinions that don’t know football, just the general public who go to Ireland games, we have had a manager from the league, and if another manager from the league got the job I could understand some people’s opinions might be negative towards that.
“I totally understand that. I have made no secret of the fact that I want to manage at the highest level possible. That is still my burning ambition and desire.
“I understand how things work in football and the perception of football from the outside from people who are not in football circles, and I’m ok with that. I’m comfortable with that.”
That perspective is something he has been working on through his work with psychologist Mary Larkin. He first began seeing her in a personal capacity and after chatting privately with former Rovers goalkeeper Alan Mannus about the positive impact she had on him, plans were put in motion to
“You have to be willing to change and evolve as time goes, and if we think what we did the last year and the year before and the year before that is the right way to do it, then we’re just fooling ourselves.
“Success can be a horrible, horrible teacher as it can lure you into thinking that everything you do is right. It’s really important that we check that all of the time and re-evaluate what we do and reflect on what we do,” Bradley says.
“That’s been really important for the players to see it works and they trust Mary and she trusts them as a group, so we’re in a really good place with that.
“I definitely feel, and I’ve said it before and been told by managers who are in the game a long time, it is definitely the next frontier in terms of the mind.
“Physically, we’re not getting better than Ronaldo in terms of the specimen, how technical players are now like Kevin De Bruyne, Phil Foden, the top ones, Martin Odegaard – they are top, top level.
“Obviously the Messis of this world, so the next one is the mind and really buying into it, learning it and understanding it. I really like that side of things for me as an individual, but the players as well.”
Bradley recalls the pre-season of 2023 and a trip to Spain where her work really began to take hold with his players.
“They have been incredible embracing it. You’re asking a group of 24 men, young men, to really buy into something that is really new and alien to young men in Ireland.
“She has been incredible for us. It’s brilliant that the group are so open in those situations. To really get the benefit you have to be vulnerable in that space and the players have shown real bravery to be vulnerable in that group.
“They understand it. Particularly this group because they are elite, when you get to a level they are at, they are looking for the next 1%, the next step that makes them better.
“They understand this makes them better so they have been brilliant at buying into it.”
More than just their football, Bradley is adamant the benefits will be more wide ranging.
“We all know the suicide rate that is unfortunately in Ireland with young men, it’s too high. Young people in general but young men, so to open something like that up in the group you’ve got to be so careful because there is so much that goes into it.
“It’s not just getting everyone in a room and let’s talk about X,Y, Z and then we’re all happy to go home.
“There are so many layers that go into it. You’re asking young men, who are macho men and have egos because you have to have an ego to play football and perform on a stage.
“You’re asking them to leave it at the door and really be open and vulnerable.”
