How a two-month romance changed the course of history for Brentford and Sheffield Wednesday striker Jordan Rhodes

Jordan Rhodes made little eye contact with those in a boisterous Brentford changing room the first time he shuffled through the doors of their Jersey Road training ground.
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It was January 2009 and the fresh-faced Ipswich Town striker had been brought in on a short-term loan by Bees manager Andy Scott to cover an injury crisis that threatened to derail their hopes of a League Two title and an important, immediate return to the third tier of English football.

Two weeks short of his 19th birthday, Rhodes had many of the characteristics you see in the Sheffield Wednesday player of today; quiet, softly-spoken and polite to a fault. But he was without the quiet confidence that would see him go on to become one of the most feared goalscorers in Football League history.

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Stepping into a club packed with big personalities, it seemed, was not something that came especially easy to him.

Jordan Rhodes won a major award for his efforts on loan at Brentford in 2009.Jordan Rhodes won a major award for his efforts on loan at Brentford in 2009.
Jordan Rhodes won a major award for his efforts on loan at Brentford in 2009.

What followed was three months that changed the course of history for both club, who 12 years on are chasing down a Championship title, and player, who is 11 goals away from surpassing David Nugent’s all-time Championship tally.

“You could see from the first training session,” said Charlie MacDonald, Brentford’s top goalscorer that season alongside whom Rhodes would play the majority of his football. “As soon as we did some attacking sessions, we know we had a player on our hands.

“We didn’t know who he was when he came in but straight away we could see the kid had endeavour, great movement and was a very, very good finisher.

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“He was a quiet kid coming into a changing room full of men. He was wary to start off with and felt his way in, but the boys took to him and he gelled nicely.”

Rhodes, prolific at youth level but not deemed ready for an opportunity with Jim Magilton’s struggling Ipswich first team, had spent short and not massively successful spells on loan at Oxford and Rochdale. A little light on confidence, he joined a side eight points back on leaders Wycombe and fresh off a defeat at bottom half Macclesfield.

Within a week he had scored on debut at home to Aldershot and had netted a hat-trick within 29 minutes at fellow challengers Shrewsbury Town. It was a game forward Nathan Elder, whose injury Rhodes had been brought in to cover, was keeping tabs on from home.

“I was laid on my sofa watching Soccer Saturday,” he said. “He scored a hat-trick in half an hour. Every time it kept popping up; Rhodes, Rhodes, Rhodes.

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“I’ll be honest, and I probably shouldn’t admit this, usually as a striker when something like that happens you’re thinking to yourself ‘Oh, crap, I’m not getting back in here’, but on this occasion I was going crazy. I realised we had this young striker that was going to win us the league. We knew we had a real player.

“At first he was really, really quiet. We were a really loud bunch, borderline insane. I like to think we might have helped make him a little bit more confident and outgoing. You could see his confidence grew in every single session we did.”

Rhodes and MacDonald developed an understanding and along with fellow Ipswich loanees Dean Bowditch and Billy Clarke, both of whom have gone on to enjoy successful league careers, the impact was made.

The Wednesday man broke his metatarsal in March, ending his season, but scored seven goals in 14 league appearances and incredibly won the PFA Fans Player of the Season award for League Two despite having played in it for only two months. Brentford went on to win the division.

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It’s an achievement that sparked further investment by now-owner Matthew Benham and a top-to-bottom transformation that has put them on the brink of the most lucrative stage in world sport.

Indeed, the Owls’ clash with Brentford on Wednesday evening will be their first visit to a state-of-the-art £71m stadium. It’s a club barely recognisable from the one Rhodes sparked his career at all those years ago.

“Looking back, had we not been able to do what we did with Jordan, I don’t know if we would’ve got over the line,” said Elder. “Without the goals Jordan scored, you just never know what would have happened.

“That season was mental. At the time Jordan came in, we really needed that boost. Who knows whether we’d have gone up or where the club would be now.”

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The Bees manager Scott, a former Sheffield United player, became well-known for his ability to pick a young player and has since gone on to become the head of recruitment at Watford and Swansea, where he now works closely with Steve Cooper’s promotion-chasing side.

MacDonald looks back on the whirlwind romance between Rhodes and Brentford as one that was game-changer for every party involved. Save for a lean few years for the striker at Hillsborough, it was a move from which nobody has looked back.

“Jordan was more technical, more talented than the young players I’d seen at that time,” he remembered. “Not many of us had that in League Two. Seeing him in training; left foot, right foot, header. I remember thinking he had perfected so much of his game at that young age, he was so important to us.

“The loan moves we had towards the end of that season were incredible but Jordan was the pick of the bunch.

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“He scored big goals, important goals, and he was a breath of fresh air really in terms of his enthusiasm. His all-round play was neat and tidy but the thing that took me aback was his hunger to want to score goals and find half-yards to get shots off.

“It’s absolutely no surprise to me that he’s gone on to achieve what he has achieved. I’ve seen how hard he works. He deserves it.”

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