Brendan Rodgers: Driving a forklift truck and getting the ferry to play games on the Isle of Wight helped make me the manager I am today

Even though he’s closing in on 800 games as a manager, Brendan Rodgers isn’t eyeing the end of his career. The start of it remains a touchstone each day.

A promising midfielder with Ballymena United, he arrived at Reading as a teenager with hopes of making it in English football.

A knee injury sustained at the age of 20 proved an unwelcome wake-up call in sleepy Berkshire.

Unwilling to give up on his dream, the Northern Irishman still strapped on the boots for non-league Newport as he started coaching. The fact the semi-pro club were based on the Isle of Wight was no impediment.

‘We trained in Basingstoke and then on Saturday I would meet up with the guys get on the ferry and go over and play over there,’ he recalled.

‘Some of the guys there .. some could have been brilliant players. But the application was not quite what you want so that is why they were there.

‘It was a brilliant spell. But it was just through the love of playing, I knew I wasn’t going to be the professional I wanted to be, but I wanted to stay in the game.’

His work ethic was always herculean, though. While he continued turning out for non-league sides Witney Town and Newbury Town at the weekends, he’d responsibilities to meet.

‘I was fully qualified on the old forklift, he revealed. ‘I worked in the John Lewis Partnership. Their main office is in Bracknell.

‘I would be in at half five in the morning. I would do that three or four times a week to get extra money.

‘I would do six in the morning til six at night. Then I would go coaching at night and do the courses and try and play.

‘You know what? That made me what I became.

‘I loved football and that made me realise even more so how much I loved it.

‘It paid for me to get my qualifications and then eventually I was offered a full-time job at Reading.’

It put him on Jose Mourinho’s radar. Rodgers was asked by the Portuguese to move to Chelsea initially as a youth coach then as reserve manager.

‘I never set out to be a manager,’ said Rodgers. ‘I set out to be the best youth coach I could be.

‘Before you know it, I was working with some of the best players in the world at Chelsea and those guys really dropped the seed in to manage.’

He remembers his first experience like it was yesterday. He moved to Watford, taking charge of a first-team for the first time against Doncaster in November 2008.

‘One each,’ he recalled. ‘I went home that night and slept like a log into the next day.

‘It was a change because I was going in to bring in my philosophy and it was not what the team had been used to. So, it took a bit of time.

‘From there we slowly got better and better.’

Rodgers, though, was a young man in a hurry. He abruptly left Watford for a return to Reading. Although that didn’t work out, he’d made a big enough impression for Swansea to come calling.

He created history by taking them into the topflight via the playoffs in his first season, the first Welsh side to do so, and kept them up.

He was close but not close enough to ending Liverpool’s generational wait for the title.

The only foot he put wrong in his first spell at Celtic was the abrupt manner of his departure.

An FA Cup win at Leicester underscored his talent. Notwithstanding the controversy surrounding his exit from Parkhead, he was the obvious choice to replace Ange Postecoglou.

On the brink of another Treble, the next time he leaves Celtic will not come a minute too soon for the chasing pack.

You don’t detect, however, that he is yet longing for that day.

‘My initial target was 1000 games, the inspiration was to get to that,’ he said.

‘Naturally as you get closer, you want to continue the journey. I think I am still relatively young as a manager, 52, so as long as the passion is there and I can work the way I want to with professionalism and commitment I will carry on.

‘But I also know life is short. There are things I would like to be able to do more of, with regards to family and spending time with them.

‘That is why I was going to have to break before coming back to Celtic. Now I am in, I am loving being here.

‘I know I would miss it after a number of weeks. When I left Leicester it was in my mind to have that period out.

‘But I knew six weeks later – my wife even said to me – I was not ready to have a year out.

‘I have loved every moment of being back, not just on a professional level but on an emotional level too.

‘Since leaving Northern Ireland at 16, I have lived all over the UK, the south of England, south of Wales, Cheshire, the Midlands, Merseyside.

‘And can say that up here feels like home. The journey on and off the pitch has been enjoyable. Hopefully, that may continue.’

From that first taste of the management game at Vicarage Road 18 years ago, he has changed and so has the job.

“The media part of it has grown,’ he reflected.

‘There is a lot more information out there which brings more issues to deal with. ‘Players are different, especially the new generation coming through. It does not affect me too much because I have always been an empathetic coach.

‘If you want to have longevity in the game you have to adapt and change as the generations change.’

Rodgers has done that as well as any of his peers. A day after lifting another league trophy with Celtic, a further recognition of his achievement will come when he’s presented with the William Hill SFWA manager of the year award tonight.

‘My journey is different to most managers, but I have loved every second of it,’ he reflected.

‘I have a lot of reason to thank the size 5 football because it has taken me round the world, that ball of air.’