ORLANDO – Robbie Keane’s endorsement started it; a series of injuries paved the way for it; a lack of family ties ensured it; and a heart-to-heart chat with Orlando City SC head coach Adrian Heath finally opened the door to it.
Now Sean St Ledger is happily sitting on the longest playing streak of the past two years of his career, looking like the Ireland stalwart he was from 2009-13. And he insists there is more to come in his debut MLS season.
Orlando’s hard-working No. 4 has pretty much seen it all in a 14-year career that started from very humble roots but progressed through solid play for the likes of Preston, Middlesbrough and Leicester to the bright lights of the international stage in the 2012 European Championship.
Yet St Ledger – still only 30 – nearly fell off the big-time soccer landscape altogether in 2014, a victim of injuries and lack of playing time in England that forced him into some hard decisions about his future.
“Robbie had always spoken highly of MLS when we were in the Ireland squad, and I heard there might be some interest from Colorado or Vancouver last year,” St Ledger told MLSsoccer.com. “Nothing materialized, but – as I don’t have kids – I decided to look into it further.
“As it happens, Ipswich released me as they had a settled side that was doing well. But, as luck would have it, the MLS season had just finished, so I was back to square one.”
Convinced he could still produce at a high level and unwilling to drop down to League One in England, St Ledger packed his boots for the US and a trial with D.C. United in February.
“I thought I did pretty well there,” he said. “But obviously they didn’t offer me anything, so it looked like it wasn’t going to work out.
“But we played Orlando in a preseason game, and I guess that opened another door. I knew the manager was British, and I knew Lewis Neal, so it was a case of coming here and trying to prove myself.”
His first contribution was conceding a penalty in a preseason game with Sweden’s BK Hacken. From that inauspicious beginning, St Ledger slowly went through the gears, getting used to a new climate, teammates, turf playing surfaces and a new soccer culture.
As if to give him one more hurdle to overcome, however, the Irishman found himself behind fellow Championship import Seb Hines in the central-defensive pecking order, starting just one of the team’s first nine games. He needed to know where he stood.
“I needed to be playing games, so I went to see the manager, and we had a bit of a heart-to-heart,” St Ledger said. “At 30, I don’t think I am done by any means. I want to get back in the Ireland squad, and I think I can still get better.
“Some of the best times of my career have been with Ireland – I love the challenge of taking on the best players in the world – and I think I am giving myself a chance at the moment.”
Now, on the back of 10 straight starts in which Orlando have posted a 5-2-3 record to put them solidly in playoff contention, St Ledger is finally relishing each game and each new opportunity, and getting a grip on his new life in the US.
While he is notably vocal on the field, he is soft-spoken off it. But he is clearly in love with the American soccer experience after his five-month crash course in all things MLS.
“I feel I am fully settled in the area,” he agreed. “This club has fantastic structure, the training ground is superb and so are the fans. I’m getting used to playing on turf, and I can’t speak highly enough of the set-up and people I’m working with.
“General manager Paul McDonough put a lot of faith in signing me, and I want to repay that by playing well and winning trophies because I think this team can certainly do that. I don’t think anyone has really out-played us this season. We play a nice style of football, and we can certainly get better.”
If there is one thing that St Ledger has found hard to deal with, it is, predictably, the traveling.
Taking a five-hour flight for a road league game is unheard of by British standards – “If we take a flight that long from Britain, you’re in the Middle East,” he points out – and it has added to the physical demands of bolstering an Orlando defense that has been the team’s strength to date.
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“Playing on turf is something we never do back home, but the toughest thing to deal with is the traveling side of things,” he said. “After we came back from San Jose, I was ill for the whole week, and the doctor said I was just run down. Looking back, I didn’t really realize the size of the country and that you could have a five-hour flight to a game.
“But, when you come to the soccer, it is very much the same. It seems every team here tries to play football, and there are some fantastic athletes in this league, so you need to be at your best each week.”
There is one other thing that has taken the veteran by surprise, though: the fans. Orlando has quickly established itself as a fervent soccer hotbed, with a fan-base possessing a huge appetite for the game.
“When you come from England, you know about the NFL, the NBA and MLB,” St Ledger said. “You know they are huge sports and you see the crowds they get.
“I knew soccer was on the rise, but I never thought we would have 30,000 fans a week here in Orlando. And it is absolutely fantastic to have that level of support behind you. There is a lot of clichéd talk about the 12th man in sport, but when teams come here they really know they are in for a difficult time.”
