Swansea aiming to get back to the big time

SOCCER ANGLES:Swansea's fate is in their own hands and, to be specific, in the hands of a man from Carnlough on the Co Antrim coast, Brendan Rodgers.

WHEN CARLO Levi wrote Christ Stopped at Eboliin the days after the second World War, the point of his title was that the town he was writing about was Gagliano. It was one stop on from Eboli. Christ – civilization, culture, life itself – stopped at Eboli and didn't go any further. Hence the dissatisfaction and resentment of the folk in the invented town of Gagliano.

Which brings us to Swansea. The sense of deprivation there may not be as acute as in Levi’s book, but spend any time in Swansea speaking to people and the feeling of being at the end of a branch line, unregarded and isolated is unmistakable. To these people Christ stopped at Cardiff.

Today when Wales face Ireland in the Six Nations, the game will be in Cardiff with the broadcasters, the BBC, known by Swansea City fans as the British Bluebirds Corporation – Bluebirds being Cardiff City’s nickname.

It can get pretty parochial down there. As Alan Curtis explained before the first south Wales derby of the season in November: “The common perception here is that Cardiff, as a city, gets far more.

“Cardiff voted against the National Assembly yet when it came to where it would be, and Swansea said we could host it, it goes to Cardiff. There’s a rivalry beyond football.”

Curtis was the brilliant, under-rated Welsh winger who sprinkled stardust on the Swansea team that John Toshack led from the old fourth division to the first 30 years ago. Swansea haven’t been back since.

“Glamorgan’s natural home is here at St Helens, where Gary Sobers hit six sixes,” Curtis continued, “but it’s Sophia Gardens in Cardiff that’s been redeveloped.

“Cardiff is the big city and everything stops there. That will have no bearing on the result but it is part of the hostility. There is an underlying grievance.

“They are always quick to point out that they are the capital city.”

The thing is that Swansea won that match and while Cardiff have since gained revenge, look at the Championship table this morning and it is unfancied Swansea, not big-wages Cardiff, in second place. It is Swansea, moreover, who are winning friends with their stylish football on the pitch and modesty off it. And they could soon be in the Premier League.

It is an “If”, though, one due to the squeeze at the top of the Championship, where QPR now have deduction worries and where the next five clubs are separated by just four points. There are 10 games to go, so this is now a test of nerve as well as talent.

But Swansea’s fate – unlike Cardiff’s they will note – is in their own hands, to be specific in the hands of a smart wee man from the postcard village of Carnlough on the Co Antrim coast, Brendan Rodgers.

Rodgers (38) arrived in south Wales last July, family in tow, knowing that if he didn’t get this right, his managerial career might stop at Swansea.

He had had two brief periods as a manager, six months at Watford, six more at Reading and his dismissal from the latter 15 months ago rocked his world, as they say, and rocked his reputation.

It had been built steadily over the previous 15 years. As a boy, the cousin of Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington, Rodgers had left Carnlough aged 16 hoping to become “one of the best young players in the world”.

He had trials at Manchester United and elsewhere but the place that bit him and his parents was Reading. They felt secure with manager Ian Branfoot.

So Rodgers signed. But reality soon clouded his dream.

“When I was 20 I had a year of injuries, groin, hernia, bad knee, blah, blah,” he said. “By that time I’d gathered what my level was going to be. I knew I wasn’t going to be what I hoped to be.

“But I knew the game, I could communicate, I was technically gifted, so I could demonstrate. I enrolled on my first course at 20.

“I was younger than everyone of course. I’d be sat in a room talking about football development and Liam Brady would be there, Steve Heighway. But I felt comfortable, not arrogant – I knew my place. I’m a football man.”

Gradually others became aware of that and in 2004, shortly before Jose Mourinho arrived at Stamford Bridge, Rodgers was recruited by Chelsea.

He became academy coach and then was asked to step up to take Chelsea’s reserves. He discovered that he and Mourinho had more in common than the same birthday.

“Sometimes the British tradition was to be aggressive, work on the basis of fear,” Rodgers said. “I’d never worked on that, I didn’t have the protection of being the big footballer who’d played 600 games.

“So I worked more on a basis of respect. Sometimes in a British environment in particular that can be deemed ‘too nice’.

“Suddenly I go to the highest level at Chelsea and I see an operator working on the basis of respect. That was a big thing. It’s about understanding human needs before football. Then there’s the football aspect, how he got players to control and dominate games.”

Rodgers was tagged a mini-Mourinho for a while but after leaving Watford quickly and then being “a failure” at Reading, that comparison was mentioned less frequently. He is not dismayed by that.

He was by the sack at Reading, his first football love. He was dismissed the same day Jim Magilton lost his job at QPR and then, tragically, both men saw their mothers die on the same day two months later. Rodgers’ mother, Christina, was 53. His father, Malachy, has cancer. Rodgers is climbing Kilimanjaro this summer in the company of Coventry manager Aidy Boothroyd and Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson to raise funds for Marie Curie.

“My mother used to do a lot of charity work in Ireland for Trocaire before she passed away and I made a promise to myself to carry on raising funds in her memory,” he wrote in the Swansea match programme on Tuesday night.

He is also doing it for Swansea, because this is definitely a new Rodgers love. The club has a policy of play and pay that predates Rodgers but he refers to “The Swansea Way” with a sense of shared ownership.

“Some seem to think Wales stops at Cardiff,” he said in November.

“Maybe people don’t come down to Swansea because we don’t boast and that doesn’t make headlines. I think the mark of this club is that it is a humble club.”

If Rodgers has his way, the Premier League won’t stop at Cardiff, it’ll carry on west to Swansea City, and to their stadium, the Liberty.