How 'sink or swim' Premiership life helped Magnus Bradbury 'crack that code'

Success came early to Magnus Bradbury as a professional rugby player.

A debut for Edinburgh aged 19. A first Scotland cap at 21. Made captain of his club a year later. A strapping 6ft 4in, 18 stone-plus back-rower with the power and athleticism to mix it with the biggest beasts in the game.

Yet his career didn’t quite pan out the way most observers expected. Yes, he has won 19 Scotland caps and may add to that tally in the coming months and years. But there remains a sense of potential still to be tapped, a career waiting for ultimate lift-off.

Bradbury recovered from the setback of being stripped of the Edinburgh captaincy only a few months after being given it, following an off-field incident in which he suffered a head injury during a fall on a night out.

When he scored a try in Scotland’s barnstorming comeback-for-the-ages at Twickenham in 2019, it was his third Test start in a row. He also impressed after a late call-up to Scotland’s World Cup squad in Japan later that year.

But he never really kicked on, at least on the international stage. He has only started eleven Tests under Gregor Townsend, across a four-year spell from 2018, and none since the last of his 19 caps on a summer tour of Argentina in 2022.

The irony there is that over the past two years spent in the rough and tumble of England’s Gallagher Premiership with Bristol, Bradbury believes he has belatedly “cracked the code” of how to get the best out of himself on a regular basis and become a “better player, and definitely more rounded”, as well as “a wee bit more mature”.

“The way I played down south, and the way Bristol played, was a challenge to begin with,” he said, speaking for the first time since returning to Edinburgh this summer. “It was sort of sink or swim. I had to learn those soft skills, I had to learn how to play in the wide channels, be effective in there - not just carrying, but facilitating play as well.

“And I loved it. I loved playing that style down there. The Prem is attritional, so you’ve still got that physicality, you’re still getting battered week in, week out. I think I was shocked by that, because I was being told a lot by Sam Skinner and other boys in Scotland camp that the Prem was something different. They weren’t lying - it is tough. But that soft play, and the way Bristol wanted to play, has developed me tremendously.”

The No.8 was voted Bristol’s player of the season by his fellow players after his first campaign in 2022-23. Last season he scored ten tries, eight of them in the Premiership, where he started 16 of the Bears’ 18 matches as they scored more points and tries than anyone, including champions Northampton.

The accusation previously levelled at Bradbury was that for all his physical presence and sporadic blockbuster carries, he would drift in and out of games and lacked consistency from one match to the next, or even one half to the next.

“I think over the last year that was a main focal point for me,” he said. “I think I delivered that. I was not 100 per cent consistent, but I was better than I had been over the past years before.

“It’s more my preparation - I think I cracked that. Instead of looking at where I could be in five weeks’ time, I was like: ‘Right, the game’s on Saturday. Game, recover, look at the next week.’ Rinse and repeat for the whole season and that will put me in good stead to improve those soft skills, look hard at myself and be really critical. Rather than being like ‘Ach, I’ll be all right, I’ll get that next week’, you actually have to address it.

“Some boys crack it earlier and think about that earlier on in their career. You have some really good professional young boys here (at Edinburgh) that are really diligent with their game. It took me a wee while to crack that code, but I’m happy with where I am at the moment, definitely.”

Bradbury is reluctant to go into the reasons why he fell out of favour with Townsend - “I don’t want to be judged on that. If I say one thing and I’m not in the squad for this reason and then I’m pish at the weekend…” – but clearly a desire to wear the thistle on his chest again was part of the thinking behind his return to the Scottish capital.

Glasgow duo Matt Fagerson and Jack Dempsey have been the preferred options at No.8 in recent years, with Bath’s Josh Bayliss also earning a couple of starts on this summer’s four-Test tour of North and South America.

But Bradbury, now 29, was called into Townsend’s training squad halfway through this year’s Six Nations before the Calcutta Cup clash with England. If he didn’t make a match-day 23, it was at least a signal that all hope of a Scotland recall is not lost.

“It was something that was thought about and discussed with my agent and the various folk that are involved,” he said. “But that is not what I’m playing rugby for. I want to play well for Edinburgh, I wanted to play well for Bristol. If that means I get to play for Scotland, so be it and I will take that with open arms and fully grab that opportunity.

“But for me it is week on week on week. If November comes around and I’m selected, brilliant. I will look at that the same way I look at playing for Edinburgh, with high intensity, a complete honour. But it’s very tunnel vision for me – one day at a time, one week at a time, one opposition at a time.

“I don’t want to be called up because of injury (to someone else). I want it to be: ‘Magnus is playing really well, he has to be in that squad, he has to be involved in the match-day 23’. But again, it’s just week on week, putting myself in the best position and see where it takes me.”

Bradbury marked his return to Edinburgh colours with a try in a pre-season warm-up win over Gloucester last Friday. A week on, it’s an enticing United Rugby Championship opener at Hive Stadium against Leinster.

A month shy of ten years since his first debut against the same opponents, it could be time for Bradbury 2.0 to take flight.