STEPHEN BRADLEY suggested his Shamrock Rovers side have been underappreciated after they were confirmed as Premier Division champions on Friday night at Tallaght Stadium.

He believes the recent selections for the player-of-the-month award, chosen by journalists, represent evidence that his team’s achievements have been unfairly overlooked.

The victory over Finn Harps meant they won the league with three games to spare, and second-place St Patrick’s Athletic trail them by 13 points as it stands.

So far, the player-of-the-month award winners have been, in chronological order, as follows: Chris Forrester (St Pat’s), Greg Bolger (Sligo), Georgie Kelly (Bohs), Dawson Devoy (Bohs), Ali Coote (Bohs), Georgie Kelly (Bohs).

A Hoops player could potentially still win the honour for October or November, nonetheless, Bradley is not happy with the present set of circumstances.

“I think what people need to look at is that it’s very, very easy to play for teams that are fourth, fifth or sixth and show up maybe every three or four weeks. It’s very easy to do that, as any player but to play and stand out and win games in a team that wants to challenge and win things, it’s a different ball game, it’s a different pressure.

“It’s very, very easy to show up every few weeks and catch someone’s eye and get a player-of-the-month award but when you’re in a team that’s really competing and really wants to win things, it’s a different ball game, different pressure, different stage, and that’s what these players have done and I just felt they deserved a little bit more respect.

“For the team to win the league with three games left, I don’t know how many points we’ll do it by, but for not one of our players to get player of the month is incredible. It’s incredible, the people picking it need to have a long, hard look at themselves because it’s very easy to show up once every three or four weeks.”

Assessing the season overall, Bradley admitted that he had been somewhat concerned by his side’s slow start, though realised it would take time for the new additions to gel with the rest of the team.

“The start was the worrying thing for me as we took 35 goals out of our team from last year. That’s very hard to replace, when you put in goals and assists, that’s what we took in.

“It was always going to be challenging to replace that early on, with new players coming in and finding their rhythm and how we play. But I felt we did that really well as the season went on.

“If you took Pat Hoban out of Dundalk when they are successful, it’s very hard to replace Georgie Kelly this year, you go through the teams throughout the years, Michael Duffy… If you take the two players that create and score the goals out, it’s very hard to replace. But I felt at the start that was going to be our tricky patch as we had to replace them in the thick of it but slowly but surely we did that and you could see when we got into our flow we were very good.”

He continues: “You’d lost Jack [Byrne] and Aaron [McEneff], those amount of goals, it was so much to try and make up for. The start was always the worry in my head and, thankfully, we did [well]. We ground out a few results during that period and then you could see the new players really settling into what we were doing.

“Our system stays the same but you have to tweak it. The players that leave, they’re unique in their own way. But the key aspect, when you break down the numbers, was that was what we were missing. And we knew we were going to have to replace that in some way, as a collective. I felt it would take time to do that, because of the timing of runs, the timing of movement, triggers, and we did that as the season went on.”

Having secured two consecutive title wins — the 18th and 19th in the club’s history — Bradley insisted there is still more to come from the group.

“We’ve been trying to build for a few years but every year our players are getting bought. That’s the nature of the beast. That’s where we are and that’s what we do and with that comes a little bit of change. We don’t want too much change, we want to stay together and do better at what we do and, obviously, we want to add to it.

“The target has to be ‘can we make it three in a row?’ That has to be the target. We need to score more goals, concede less and lose fewer games next year. That’s what we have to do. That has to be our aim.”