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Exclusive interview: Steve Bruce calls past 12 months 'worst year of my life' after losing parents and battling cancer
You can see most of Steve Bruce’s scars, the broken nose, the gash above his eye, but it is the ones buried deep inside that make their way to the surface as he reflects ahead of his first Steel City derby as Sheffield Wednesday manager.
This is Bruce raw and uncut – on the trauma of losing both his parents and his job as Aston Villa manager last year, and of being diagnosed with cancer.
He talks of the “guilt” he feels about “not spending more time with my parents because I was consumed by my job”, how he still “reaches for his phone every day to call my dad... the grief that consumes me every time”.
He speaks about his wife, Jan, and the “heroic” role she played in looking after his mother, following a severe stroke. But also how, without her, he would have walked away from football years ago.
“When I heard the word ‘cancer’, I was in bits,” he admits. “I panicked, I think everyone does, it was very scary, horrible. Thankfully, the melanoma does not appear to have spread. They’ll continue to monitor me, I’ve got scars on my face, on my back. Good thing I was never worried about my good looks...”
Bruce describes the past 12 months as “the worst year of my life”. But the meeting on Sunday night with Sheffield United, the club where he embarked on life as a manager 21 years ago, sparks other memories.
“I began my managerial career in Sheffield and it might come to an end in this city too,” Bruce said, at his desk, where a laminated match file, emblazoned with the opponents’ club crest, takes pride of place. “If I’m here in four years, things will have gone well. That might be it. In four years, I’ll be 62. I played almost 1,000 games as a player and I’m approaching 1,000 as a manager. That’s pretty impressive.
“Every time I took another job, my dad would ask, ‘Why are you putting yourself through it again, haven’t you got enough money?’
“I wish I’d spent more time with them, I think anyone who loses their parents will understand that, but I also know what he would have said. ‘You crack on Steve, get on with it, son’.
“Geordies get up every day, they go to work, they put a shift in. That’s what my dad taught me, but I still have that guilt... I miss them both terribly.”
Bruce, though, has a derby to prepare for. United are third in the table, pushing for automatic promotion, but Wednesday are unbeaten in six games since Bruce took control and could still make the play-offs. “I was player-manager at Sheffield United,” Bruce said. “I played my last ever game for them. It was terrible. We lost 4-1, I think to Sunderland. Fancy that, a Geordie, being forced to retire because of a defeat to Sunderland.
“I got a bit of stick off Dean Saunders. I tried to have a go at them after the game and he said, ‘You weren’t any better’.
“You can’t manage the team, give out a bollocking. I can remember them looking at me in the dressing room and I could tell they were thinking, ‘You were f---ing awful, Steve’. That was it in a nutshell.
“I’ll be forever grateful to Sheffield United. It was my first manager’s job and it was a steep learning curve. I only lasted 12 months, it was a quick and brutal introduction.
“I can remember, we were playing Bristol City and I could hear Dean Saunders whistling coming down the stairs carrying his bag. I said, ‘Dean, where are you going?’
“He said, ‘Has nobody told you? I signed for Benfica an hour ago. I’m on the 3.30 from Heathrow’. That was three hours before kick-off. What it taught me was, what I’d done as a player, it meant nothing. I was Steve Bruce, Manchester United captain, but nobody gave a s---.”
Then, in 1999, came an offer from Huddersfield, an initially positive experience that eventually led Bruce down a dark path into depression.
“I got the sack after 18 months. That was the moment where everything came crashing down. We sold our centre-forward, Marcus Stewart, with 12 games to go. We were second in the table. In Huddersfield, they still think it was me, but why would I sell my centre-forward? It was the owner – we didn’t even make the play-offs.
“We’d had a positive 10 months, but it drifted away. We lost to Grimsby and I got the sack. It was then that everything hurt. Management back then was just a substitute for playing. I just wanted to stay in the game. I thought I had something to offer. But after Huddersfield, it hit me hard. I became a recluse; miserable, bitter. Thankfully, I was having a bit of work done on my house, so I put my boots on and I got stuck into labouring. It kept me sane.
“I disappeared. I didn’t even watch much football. Jan, my wife, forced me out of the house on my 40th birthday to go to a game. When I got back, the kids were all dressed up, she was all dressed up. She’d organised a surprise party, but I didn’t want to go. I was that bad. That was the low point...
“I’ve seen that happen to so many players. You’re institutionalised and you come to the end and it’s brutal. I’ve had a conversation with Alan Shearer about it. He had the same. Niall Quinn was another one. That six months after losing my job at Huddersfield, I was in a downward spiral. Jan was brilliant, a rock.”
Had it not been for a surprise short-term offer from Wigan in 2001, Bruce admits he may not have returned and gone on to have success at Birmingham City, Wigan, Sunderland and Hull City.
“Working for Dave Whelan at Wigan, he was so positive, so helpful,” Bruce said. “It ignited something over those seven games. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but I almost gave up. To have had the career I’ve had since, well, I’m proud of that for more reasons than I’ve admitted before. So, when I took my break after my operations, I knew I’d come back. I just didn’t think it would be this quickly.
“I want to get Wednesday back into the Premier League. I’ve taken this job because I believe I can get them back there. It excites me. I like the owner. It felt right and I know exactly what my dad would have said if I told him that.”