Interview: Michael Bradley, Edinburgh head coach

The 49-year-old Cork Constitution man grew up a proud boy of Munster, a footballer and rugby player who trained every day of the week and eventually made the choice to follow the oval ball at 16 when rugby became more intense at the Presentation Brothers College in Cork, an all-male private school that terms itself “an unashamed rugby school”.

His father, Austin, had represented Ireland in youth football and was a decent club flanker. The second of five sons, Bradley had ready-made competition in trying a variety of sports through his childhood – hurling, Gaelic football, soccer, rugby, golf and tennis to name a few.

The youngest in the country to pull on the emerald green, when he made his international debut as a 17-year-old in an Ireland U18/19 select that toured Australia in 1980, he would go on to win 40 caps for Ireland as a doughty scrum-half. He made his Test debut against the Wallabies in 1984, facing half-backs Nick Farr-Jones and Michael Lynagh a week before his 22nd birthday.

His first Five Nations international was next up at Murrayfield at the start of what was to become a Triple Crown year for Ireland, and so there was already a warm feeling when he pitched up at the national stadium in the summer as the somewhat surprise choice to be the new head coach of Edinburgh.

Jed-Forest’s Roy Laidlaw was his Murrayfield opponent in 1985, and the Scotland captain in a game won 18-15 by the Irish after a last-gasp try by Trevor Ringland. The Scots went on to follow a Grand Slam with the wooden spoon while Ireland followed a wooden spoon with a second Triple Crown in three years.

“Murrayfield does hold great memories, for sure,” he said this week, in a break from preparations for the second leg of the all-Scottish 1872 Cup derby with Glasgow.

“There were five of us that got capped that year and winning the Triple Crown under Mick Doyle was fabulous, especially for a youngster just coming in.

“I played my first A match the year before, at Melrose I think, and Gavin Hastings played for Scotland that day [Fin Calder, John Jeffrey, David Sole and Iwan Tukalo also played]. I was only 21, had come through the schoolboys set-up and I was very conscious of Scotland because they were very strong then.

“I was stepping into the Five Nations as it was then and faced John Rutherford and Roy Laidlaw, a couple of the Milnes, and a lot of Lions players.

“During that period from 1985, I think we only beat Scotland once in the ten years I was involved [1988 at Lansdowne Road]; they just kept beating us, it was amazing.

“Roy was a fabulous player. I played him five or six times and every time he seemed to score, but he was into everything, controlling things; a real terrier. It was good to catch up with him and John Rutherford, and Keith Robertson as well recently at an event for Bill McLaren down in the Borders.

“It’s a coincidence that it’s Roy’s nephew that I’m working with now, but that’s not unusual with the size of playing populations we have in Scotland and Ireland. It just shows how tight a game it is. But Greig is a guy who leads by example in terms of his dedication and how he applies himself and he’s very ambitious, and we would like to see all those traits in all the players here.”

Bradley has come from a strong rugby background, and the amateur era of rugby, where he had “a real job” in banking, insurance and latterly sales with a graphic design company.

He believes that he trained as hard as the current professionals in his charge at Edinburgh do, “only we didn’t have the scientific approach, and time for rest and refuelling”.

He has also had to work hard for respect as a coach. He was advised to start with the youth game rather than senior club rugby, and believes it was wise counsel as he was able to develop confidence with players who listened and improved, rather than with senior players “who listen, take 50 minutes to debate it and probably never do what you say anyway”. The young coach impressed and was given roles with Ireland U21s – where a late Gavin Henson score deprived his side of an U21 Grand Slam – and the Ireland ‘A’ side, but handed what was perceived to be less of a poisoned chalice, more just poison, with the head coach position at Ireland’s least popular province, Connacht. Situated in the west of Ireland, Gaelic sport territory, the IRFU had decided to pull pro rugby out of Galway, only for street marches in 2002 to force a rethink.

“I was seconded to Connacht in 2003, for a year, supposedly. They were in a very vulnerable position, the coach [Steph Nel] left and they put me in. They had less money than the others and if you’re asking whether the IRFU have supported it 100 per cent in terms of a roadmap to the future, the answer’s probably not.

“It is still vulnerable, but it’s a strong brand now, they’ve qualified for the Heineken Cup for the first time and there’s strong support; the facilities are good and when they go out onto the pitch the players believe they can win every match and everyone is very complimentary of their current status which is fantastic.”

There are clear parallels between that and Scottish rugby’s handling, or mishandling, of the Borders and Caledonia. The SRU took fright at the costs of pro rugby after launching its four teams on a similar footing to the Irish in 1997, then brought back the Borders in 2002 only to shut it down again in 2007.

There are no plans to restore the team, due to a lack of the £5m-plus per year the SRU now spends on each pro club, but Bradley feels strongly about the value of the Borders.

“Ireland is very clannish. You have four provinces in Irish rugby, so it didn’t make sense to the rugby people that you would have three provinces. It might have made sense financially but it didn’t make sense to the rugby people.

“Irish rugby would be unbalanced if Connacht was not there and you’ve got to wonder about Scottish rugby without the Borders. I used to love playing the Borders. We had great matches with them and I have great memories of George Graham [Borders assistant coach] on the sidelines where we’d be slagging each other about the quality of the referee, the play, everything. Those were good times.

“I was sad to see them disbanded. I knew they had a strong tradition and since I have come here I’ve realised just how strong it is and so it is very disappointing. That’s my opinion as a rugby person, and the mechanics of the finances come into it, but Scottish rugby needs Borders rugby.

“For me coming in fresh, I want the Borders to be part of what we are about. I don’t see Edinburgh Rugby as a brand covering just the city. When you look at it, we have two teams covering the west and east of Scotland so I see Edinburgh Rugby as going up to Aberdeen on the east coast and down to the English border in the south. The franchise plays in Edinburgh, but our captain [Laidlaw] is from the Borders, Mossy [Chris Paterson] is from the Borders, and we have Ross Ford, Geoff Cross, Lee Jones, James King, Gregor Hunter, John Houston … a whole gang of boys who are proud Borders rugby players.

“There are loads of rugby supporters in the Borders and so outside their clubs, we’re their pro team. I know that might not sit well in terms of Edinburgh and the South having always been against each other, but in my opinion Edinburgh Rugby has to say a different thing than just city rugby; it’s a region. The message from me is that there are open arms to people who love good rugby. They will be welcomed here if they come from Aberdeen down to the bottom of the Borders.”

Bradley is strong on roots and history. The first thing he did at Edinburgh was to pull the squad together and ask them who they played for, really played for, what the jersey meant to them and what they felt it meant to people handing over £20 to watch them.

That matters to Bradley and now it is what drives him to a greater good – that of improving Scottish rugby. He accepts that it was not what he envisaged he would be doing when he hung up his boots as a player at the same time as Gavin Hastings with Scotland, at the end of the 1995 World Cup, but he had little choice.

Bradley rightly takes pride in how he helped Connacht grow over seven years in Galway, but when applications for posts with the bigger provinces were rebuffed he realised that it counted for little in his home country. He took up an IRB offer to coach Georgia, where he met Richie Dixon, and it was the former Glasgow and Scotland coach who pushed him to apply for the Edinburgh post.

Now, his ambition to prove himself on the European stage combined with experience of how Irish rugby has made a success of the pro game, on similar playing rations to Scotland, could turn his appointment into the best thing the former SRU chief executive Gordon McKie did for the Scottish game before leaving.

Irish rugby has transformed since 2000 and enjoyed its best-ever decade of domestic and Test results while Scotland endured its worst decade. The reasons to Bradley are plain to see, and route to success as evident, though still challenging.

“In Ireland there was already a strong affinity to the brands Munster, Leinster, Ulster and Connacht in Ireland. It gathered momentum that way. Scottish rugby didn’t really settle on who their professional teams were so there was nothing to grab on to.

“People were still very loyal to the national side and their clubs here, but the middle ground they haven’t connected to. That is the key point. You look at the Irish provinces going back 125 years, it means something to the people that live in the region and they have been consistent with that.

“They are far more supported now than they were in the amateur era, but there was an affinity there to begin with and it was consistent from 1995 onwards. And you’re looking at Munster who had almost a full pack of Lions to go and watch, all from the area, and backs [Peter] Stringer and [Ronan] O’Gara, local boys too, so there was an obvious team to get in behind and support as the pro era took off.

“Edinburgh Rugby now as a brand is very strong. You live with it here and are very close to it, but when you look at the club from afar you see a fabulous set-up, fantastic players and emerging talent, and I see playing at Murrayfield as a positive.

“The set-up now with the standing around the pitch and the clubrooms inside is vastly better than what it was and there’s a good connection between the supporters and the team.

“My view is that Edinburgh has under-achieved and so I would like to get the team to a stage where it is achieving its potential. On our day, and it is premised by ‘on our day’, we can beat anybody. Now have we the right to say we’re consistent in qualifying for Europe? We don’t. But that is what we’re working towards and why we’re all working hard to make that breakthrough this year.”

He pinpoints strength in depth as key, and insists that he is not far behind Glasgow in using the new funds provided by SRU CEO Mark Dodson, and will be announcing the re-signing of young talents and new signings in the near future. He smiles at the suggestion that a hulking Georgian forward or two – from his knowledge of their camp – might join the camp next year.

With dark features, he is a difficult man to gauge. He has a natural reticence and so far there has been a nervousness, even suspicion, in media sessions. It may stem, understandably, from the ‘is that it?’ surprise that greeted Bradley when he took over, the feeling that the appointment of a coach from the bottom club in the then Magners League was far from an improvement on the sacked Rob Moffat.

The smiles are beginning to appear, however, after his poor start during World Cup time turned with wins over London Irish, Racing Metro and Cardiff in the Heineken Cup, and the potential for reaching the quarter-finals for only the second time in 14 years.

“I am happy with the response I’m getting from the players,” Bradley said. “We spent a lot of time speaking about why we do this and why the fans pay money to support you. Sometimes players forget that and it’s important that they are reminded of it; that they connect to it and it makes sense to them.

“It can be a lonely and hard job as well. You’re an individual within a team and you’re doing this for ten years, with lots of ups and downs, so you need reasons for why you’re here and why you’re working so hard, yet playing this week and not the next.

“Are the players more confident in what they’re doing on the pitch? I think they are improving and as a management team we’ve gelled well together. But we’re disappointed with our position in the RaboDirect Pro12 [ninth]. With an ambition to get to the top four, we’re not happy with Glasgow being comfortably nine points ahead of us. So there are targets there for us for sure, starting this weekend in Glasgow.

“We do need to invest in our pack particularly, because the secret to performing in Europe is consistency of performance when our internationalists are away. If we ship an injury then we will find it difficult to perform, whereas if other teams ship an injury they can put in another player of equal standard.

“To get to that we have to keep working hard to bring through players in Scotland to that standard, or if the quality is not there in certain positions we have to bring in quality to match that requirement when it’s under pressure.”

Bradley received some flak this week after selecting a side with 13 changes to that which drew 23-23 with Glasgow on Boxing Day for tomorrow’s return at Firhill, some supporters fearing that the Irishman does not grasp the importance of a Scottish derby. He just smiles at that and points me to earlier comments about building for a successful future. People do not really know Bradley yet, but his ambition is crystal clear.

“This is a huge derby match with Glasgow and it will be another special game that brings out the passion in every player that plays in them. By the time we’ve finished tomorrow we’ll have 28 players who have experienced the pressures of playing in that intensity and pressure, and that’s the bigger picture for me of making Edinburgh successful.

“The easy decision is just picking the same players every week, but that doesn’t work for anybody and doesn’t build success, and that’s what we’re here for.”

As one might expect of a Cork scrum-half who enjoyed Celtic scraps with Laidlaw, Bradley has a steel about him and is proving that he is not one for easy decisions. A different voice and different character to what has gone before at Edinburgh definitely, but an intriguing blend at the club’s helm in a promising time for Scottish rugby.