Why Caulfield’s bench made its Brentford debut against Chelsea

It was described by a player earlier this year as a place of “good conversation, trust and laughter”. Caulfield liked the phrase so much that he rushed to find something to write it on and emerged from the boot room with a piece of cardboard, on which he scribbled down the sentence and then got the player to sign it. After that, Caulfield had the cardboard framed and it now hangs proudly in his house.

Caulfield’s bench has been well known to everyone who has worked at Brentford over recent years, but people outside the club – including many fans – were not aware of it until last Saturday’s game with Chelsea.

Then, as part of the Premier League’s Together Against Suicide campaign, the bench made its debut at the Gtech Community Stadium and Caulfield was interviewed on it by the side of the pitch before the match.

“Out of all the things that have happened to me at Brentford over the years and in sport, I think this has had just about the most extraordinary reaction,” said Caulfield, who will be delivering the closing keynote speech at TGG Live 2025 on October 8th.

“I’ve had coaches, managers, players, supporters getting in touch and most importantly I’ve had parents going, ‘you actually encouraged me to take my son for a walk on Sunday morning and sit down on a park bench and just talk’.

“I’ve had so many messages like that and that really has surprised me. And even people in the club very privately have come to see me and say, ‘I enjoyed listening to you on Saturday night by the bench’.

“The players were kind enough to message me after the game and said it was amazing to see the bench there,” he told TGG.

Brentford benches

The Bees’ involvement in the Premier League’s campaign is also going to have a long-term spin-off for the London Borough of Hounslow, where the club is situated.

The club are going to place a number of benches around the borough which will be known as Brentford benches.

“They’re going to be benches where just anyone can go and they will have the plaque saying ‘Talking is the Best Tactic’ [the slogan for the Premier League’s campaign],” Caulfield explained. “They will be for people to just go and sit down and talk, and it could be someone they know well or someone they don’t know so well.”

Caulfield’s bench has a plaque which reads ‘Michael’s Bench; Just sit and talk, or just sit’, a phrase he instantly thought of when asked for an inscription to go on it. The bench is now one of four at the training ground, including one belonging to the club’s B team, with whom Caulfield worked for a couple of years.

“The first thing they said to me was, ‘can we have a bench?’. I said, ‘yes but you have to think of a title for the plaque’. They came back late in the day and they came up with the most, I think, genius name, and it was ‘Michael’s other bench’, which says it all.

“That bench is where I got to know a lot of the B team players who are now thriving either in league football or hopefully the first team. And I actually asked them at the end of last season, because they were very kind and said some nice things to me, ‘why did this work?’. It shouldn’t work because they were in their teens, and they all said exactly the same thing – ‘it was a safe place’.”

What gave Michael the idea of using a bench in his football work in the first place?

“I’ve got a picture of my father at home sitting outside the house on his bench, which he used to sit on every night. That’s where he used to go and sit and just relax and rest up. And I hadn’t noticed that wherever you went, anywhere beautiful in the world, in England and the UK, whether at the seaside or parks, there was always a bench just looking at this gorgeous view or with a memory of someone.

“I thought all the best moments in my life conversation-wise have taken place in a very informal environment. I don’t think my life has ever been changed in a meeting or a meeting room so I thought the same for football – let’s try and create an area where informal conversation can thrive safely. It’s got to be where people can just be themselves and I think that has happened in the main.”

‘Light touch’

He added: “I’ve seen a lot of sports psychology, sports psychologists and mental coaches develop. I’m a qualified psychologist and worked at Middlesbrough and Hull before Brentford and I’ve seen the role change and it’s changing again now.

“This isn’t a criticism, just an observation – I’ve noticed that the role I think in football at the moment has possibly become too formal, too strategic and too academic.

“I don’t think that’s what the environment needs if you’re working at elite first-team level. I think it requires a very, very light touch.

“I think everyone at Brentford knows I have no real influence over the club – the strategy, the direction, nothing. I certainly don’t get involved, nor am I invited, nor would I go anyway. I have no involvement at senior or strategic level.

“I think I can probably count on a single hand the number of times I’ve been in the head coach’s office in the last eight years. I actually never went in the Griffin Park dressing room in my four years and I’ve only been in our home dressing room once since we moved to the new stadium. And on the rare days when I have been away with the team, I don’t go in the dressing room before the match. I’d never do that – that’s my choice, and I think the managers and, above all, the players appreciate it.

“I buy my own ticket and have a season ticket at the Gtech and genuinely believe that the matchday belongs to the players and don’t think they need another person wishing them good luck.”

Caulfield feels his work at Brentford has been highly valued by the senior figures at the club.

“I have had three managers and a sporting director and a line manager who’ve done nothing but support me, including Keith Andrews who has embraced me rather than rejected me or changed me. One of the strengths of the club is the flatline of leadership of Matthew Benham, Phil Giles, Cliff Crown and Nity Raj. I don’t think I’ve ever worked for smarter people in my life.”

One person who Caulfield misses, though, is the club’s late Technical Director Robert Rowan (portrait pictured above), who died suddenly in 2018 at the age of 28.

“He really left a mark on my life,” says Caulfield. “I walk past his portrait every morning, every evening when I go in, and I always say ‘good morning Rob’ and I always think how would he go about this? And so I’m hoping there’s shades of his decency as a man.

“The fact we’re keeping his memory alive means a great deal to his widow Suzanne. The whole thing’s become quite symbolic because of the picture of that bench pitchside on Saturday with the team warming up behind us.”

As part of the Premier League Tackling Suicide campaign, defender Kristoffer Ajer was interviewed on the bench with Caulfield by Sky.

“Kris was asked why it worked for him and he simply said, ‘we all like to come here and sit down and talk, and it’s mainly nonsense’! Then he added, ‘but it’s important nonsense’, and I couldn’t have thought of a better way of describing what we do.”