The chance of easing into a role gently is not available to a physio who starts a new job in the middle of a hectic season. Chris Brunskill, in those early weeks back at Carlisle United, had little time to reflect.
“I came in on Boxing Day, and there were three games in a week, so it was a bit manic,” he says. “It was a bit of a baptism of fire, but it was good for me, because it threw me in at the deep end.
“Then I was able to take a breath.”
Brunskill is now more than a month into a role as the Blues’ head physio which he says he had coveted for many years. The Cumbrian returned to Carlisle – where he had previously worked with the academy – to replace Kilmarnock-bound Ross Goodwin.
Brunskill, who was born in Penrith and grew up in Carlisle, duly became a crucial part of Paul Simpson’s backroom staff in an exciting and also injury-hit season. United have maintained a promotion challenge despite seemingly endless injuries in the first half of the season.
Now he has his feet a little further under the table, has the new physio come to any conclusions about the physical issues that the Blues have had to cope with?
“It’s a good point – it’s something you obviously want to look into,” he says. “When you have such a big number of injuries, you want to find the cause.
“The truth is, it could have been this, could have been that. Some of them were just complete freak injuries. For example, with Tobi [Sho-Silva] and his ankle, there's nothing anybody could have done with that.
“You look at everything and ask if there is something that could have caused it. If there isn’t you draw a line under it. With others, you ask if it is a loading issue?
“Thankfully I've worked with Jamie [Roper, United’s fitness coach] before, we've got a decent relationship and we can chat things through pretty easily. But there was nothing that leapt out to say there's a serious issue going on here.
“Some of it is just down to periods like that first week, when we had three games in a week. You can't do much about that. Most clubs will have picked up certain injuries. Unfortunately we did, and in some ways it's unavoidable.
“You've got to look at the things that you can control and the other things that you can't control, you don't lose sleep over…”
Brunskill has the opportunity to analyse, and attend to, United’s injured players because he returned from Blackburn Rovers in December. He says the move “felt like coming home” but still came as something of a surprise.
“I’d kept in touch with a few of the lads and I was actually talking to Josh Dixon when he came down to Blackburn to do a bit of testing. We were talking about how it was going up in Carlisle and I mentioned that I thought Ross would probably be there for years, a bit like Dolly [legendary former physio Neil Dalton].
“Part of the conversation was Dicko asking me if I’d ever come back. I told him it would be something I’d definitely consider but that it didn’t matter anyway because it was never going to happen.
“That was a Friday, and it was literally the following Monday when he texted me to ask if I’d see the news that Ross had announced he was moving back to Scotland…”
Brunskill and his family were settled in Lancashire, where he was Blackburn’s under-23 physio and later worked with the first team, but spoke to his wife about the idea of applying, and duly did so.
He had also done so, he says, when Dalton left the club in 2020. “At that time when he left, I spoke to the club and they said, ‘Look, we think it’s just a little big early’. That set off that hunger of thinking, ‘Right, I want this job at some point’.”
Brunskill’s application impressed United, and the 32-year-old was appointed to the role in December. While the respected Goodwin had been at the club for under two years, his predecessor Dalton had been part of the Blues’ fabric for the best part of three decades.
“Yeah – it's big shoes to fill,” says Brunskill. “Obviously, as soon as the job came up, I saw fans commenting on social media saying, ‘Bring Dolly back’.
“I've been in touch with him. I'm still talking to him. He taught me an unbelievable amount in the years I worked with him. But I've put pressure on myself more than anything, on that side of things – asking, ‘Am I running it the right way and am I doing it the right way?’.
“Dolly kind of moulded me a lot in terms of the way that he worked now being the way that I work. It's daunting but exciting to come back and go, right, I'm coming in as the head physio, putting my own stamp on it, working my own way.
“But ultimately, whoever does the job, it's about keeping the fit lads on the pitch and helping rehab the injured lads and get them back on the pitch. And that's what it boils down to at the end of the day.”
Brunskill is a Carlisle supporter who used to have a season ticket, and says it feels like returning to “my club” after two years at Blackburn, where he moved to further his physio experience in a Championship environment.
“At the time when that happened it was more about just enjoying the experience, because it was a step up from the youth team, and putting that together with the experiences of working in the Championship as the head physio, on match days and during the working week, it’s what it’s all about,” he says.
What, in particular, did he learn at Ewood Park?
“They had a bigger medical team, and I worked with some physios who worked in rugby too,” he says. “They all have different experiences, so you just naturally pick up different ways of rehabbing, and different ways to assess.
“Because every physio is a little bit different, everyone works in a different way. I've had more exposure to working closely with seven, eight other physios in my short space of time at Blackburn. It can also come down to different communication skills, from more experienced physios and the way they deal with certain issues.
“Having worked very closely with the head [physio] at Blackburn and seen how he approaches the gaffer there with and certain news and how to break news to him and what he picked up through his career…I think that was one of the big things I took away with me – how to communicate properly with more senior management staff, and the best way to approach it.”
Brunskill has prior experience in the bank from his early days in physiotherapy, “putting the hard yards in” whist volunteering, working with Penrith “when I was really raw and young” before working with United’s youth team for four years, having also qualified from the University of Cumbria. He is also currently working on a Masters.
While the science of the job is a given, so is what Brunskill describes as the “soft skills”, which he believes accounts for “70 per cent” of the job.
“It’s people skills – can you get them onside with what they need to do? Especially when you’re coming into a new group of lads who are waiting to see how you work,” he says.
“I knew some of the players here, and the ones I didn’t have been top class with me. You have to earn the trust because, with something like this, if they don’t trust you it affects the way they are around you. As with any job, trust is a massive thing and it only comes from showing that you know what you’re talking about and building relationships within that.”
Brunskill is also charged with keeping spirits up amongst those players enduring the long weeks and months of rehabilitation. “We’ve got a group of injured lads in there who could easily start to feel really sorry for themselves, because a lot of them still have a long way to go in their rehab, and that can bring some difficult days.
“Morale is a massive thing but I have to say that they’re a great group. Taylor Charters is telling some of the worst jokes I’ve ever heard, but that kind of thing keeps morale up. We’re doing quizzes, riddles, all sorts of stuff just to keep them thinking about other things.
“Hearing Jack Ellis try to work out the riddles is frightening, to be honest, but that kind of thing really does help. I want the physio room to be a place where, instead of it feeling like a difficult place to be, through the tough months of rehab, it’s somewhere where everyone is picking each other up and keeping it bright.
On midfielder Charters’ Maryport wit, Brunskill adds: “At the minute he's doing joke of the day. I think he started it a week and a half ago and they've got worse…”
Brunskill became father to twins in January, adding to the “whirlwind” nature of the last couple of months. “It’s brilliant, but the sleep has definitely gone!” he says. “My wife has been unbelievable with all of that, she’s dealt with most it.
“We’ve got a two-year-old who thankfully my parents have looked after and she’s loved that. My head is in so many places right now. We’ve still got to sell our house down there, find somewhere up here, so it’s all being juggled as we speak. But the way the gaffer has been with, and the same goes for the lads, it's made it all so much easier.”
Brunskill says of Paul Simpson: “From my first phone call with him, it put me at complete ease, I'd heard good things about him and he was very approachable, which is a huge thing. It's less of having kind of formal sit-downs about stuff. It's more just having an open door policy, being able to go over and see him first thing in the morning or straight after training, whenever I need to.”
He says this level of communication with Simpson and the rest of the staff is essential to oiling the wheels of a successful club. The chance to mark his first campaign back at United with a part in a promotion would clearly be special.
“Everyone connected with the club wants it,” he says. “We want to win things. It kind of drives you. And it makes it so much easier in terms of doing the job – the buzz around the place and around the city, attendances are coming back up again, and the away following has been unbelievable.
“That gives the lads so much, when they're chatting before the game and knowing it's going to be a big following.
“You just want to keep it going, keep ticking the games off, picking up results and then obviously dare to dream as we get maybe a month or two down the line.
“To be able to come back to the club and get some success, it would be something I would have dreamed of. Having followed the club through the years it's kind of ingrained into you to have your pessimistic hat on. but I think everyone's starting to believe a little bit.”
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