Lewis Stevenson has revealed he quickly got over his Hibernian departure - despite spending nearly two decades in the Easter Road first team.
The 36-year-old departed the Scottish Premiership side in the summer after 19 seasons in green and white, joining hometown club Raith Rovers alongside fellow long-serving Hibee Paul Hanlon, where he has settled in quickly.
"It was strange for the first week or so but it's mad how quickly you feel at home," Stevenson told the Open Goal podcast.
"The boys have been brand new and the standard in training is really good. I've really enjoyed it so far. I loved my time at Hibs but sometimes it does feel like a weight off my shoulders - you can reinvent yourself and start scoring 25-yarders," he added, referencing his stunning strike against Hamilton Accies in the Scottish Championship clash at Stark's Park earlier this month.
During their time at Hibs, particularly in the mid-2010s, Stevenson and Hanlon formed a formidable defensive line along with David Gray and Darren McGregor, who both remain at Easter Road in different capacities; Gray as head coach after four interim spells in charge, and McGregor as head coach of the side's under-18s, who remain unbeaten in the league so far this season.
Having had the benefit of playing alongside Gray and being coached by him, Stevenson spoke about his former team-mate.
"He's a player who I always thought would be a manager; he never got involved in any silly stuff. He's good at emotional speeches too - he nearly had me in tears one time, but then I do cry quite easily!
"It was about family and how it changed his life when he scored that goal in the cup final. I think it was before the League Cup final against Celtic - why we do this, the sacrifices we make. I won't do it justice but it was really good. It's not for everybody but I think before a cup final is as good a time as any.
"I'm pretty sure he will be doing most of the coaching. It was Jack Ross who gave him that coaching chance and I think it was a big decision for him. He's the same age as me so he was only about 32 at the time and he still could have played, but I think he probably learned a lot from Jack Ross. He got on really well with Shaun Maloney after that, and he'll have taken things from every manager he's worked with. He has a good way about him, he had it as a player as well."
A chance under Mowbray
But it was under Tony Mowbray that Stevenson first got an opportunity in the senior team, with the former Celtic captain followed in the Easter Road hotseat by John Collins, Mixu Paatelainen, John Hughes, Colin Calderwood, Pat Fenlon, Terry Butcher, Alan Stubbs, Neil Lennon, Paul Heckingbottom, Jack Ross, Shaun Maloney, Lee Johnson, and Nick Montgomery before Gray took charge in the summer, with the Fifer playing under each and every one of the men to hold the top job in EH7.
"I thought Tony Mowbray was brilliant, he had a really good way about him. When he went to Celtic I was dying for him to do well because he was good to me and gave me my debut and a wee run in the team," he said.
Terry Butcher's reign
Nearly a decade later, Stevenson was playing regularly as Hibs eventually suffered relegation, resulting in the departure of manager Terry Butcher, whose appointment had initially brought a wave of positivity that evaporated almost as quickly as it had arrived.
"Butcher's motivational speeches were actually alright. He made Jason Cummings do a couple of speeches, inspirational speeches. He was actually quite good! Butcher wanted to do something different every time so Jason got up and said, 'I can see how good you all are, just go out there and pretend you're at the Astro with your pals, take the weight off your shoulders, relax, and play'. But it obviously didn't work that well as we got relegated that year.
"He was really hard on James Collins too. He was bought for a fee and Butcher would say to him, 'How much did you f*****g cost this club?' Butcher told him his whole Inverness team had cost less than he had but it wasn't his fault it hadn't worked out, and he was banging them in again when he went back down the road.
"Things started off well enough [under Butcher]; we'd come in later on a Monday after the game at the weekend and everyone would have a tea or coffee together but by the end of the season, it was crazy the turn from when he came into when he left. After the first leg against Hamilton, Butcher was going to the fans afterwards and conducting them singing, and we were 2-0 up so everyone thought we'd done it.
"But then we went a goal down in the return leg at Easter Road after five minutes and you could feel the stadium going, 'Oh, f***'. I think there was almost an acceptance when we got relegated, because it felt like it had been going that way for a while. In the long run, I think the club needed a fresh start and it felt like a better place after that."
Alan Stubbs arrived in the summer and so too did a raft of changes at Easter Road from top to bottom, as new chief executive Leeann Dempster and head of football operations George Craig set about orchestrating the club's fresh start in the second tier.
"The Championship that year was an exciting league but not ideal if you were wanting to bounce back up. We finished second; Hearts ran away with it and Rangers were third. But we also had to rebuild the relationship with the fans because it had been torture. The first few games, it was hard to play. It felt like they were waiting for us to make mistakes, or just coming to the games to shout, 'F****n' boooooo!' But to be fair, we started playing well and made some good signings and things got better," Stevenson recalled.
From Stubbs to Lennon
Despite writing his name in Hibernian history by leading the side to Scottish Cup glory after 114 long years, Stubbs departed not long after that success. He had failed to get Hibs promoted back to the top flight and had also lost the League Cup final to Ross County some weeks before the Scottish Cup final, and when Rotherham United came calling he left, possibly sooner than many fans would have anticipated or indeed wanted.
"Stubbsy was great, his man-management was good and we all got on well with him. There was us, Hearts, and Rangers but there were three part-time teams in the division as well. It was a strange league because you would go from a hard game to one that you should be winning. But the fact we beat Rangers a few times helped get the fans back onside," Stevenson said.
Lennon arrived and succeeded where Stubbs hadn't: he got Hibs back into the Scottish Premiership, and in their first season back in the top league he oversaw an exciting team that scored goals, played attractive football, and - perhaps most importantly - held their own and then some against Celtic, Hearts, and Rangers.
"The first year under Lenny we probably just got over the line in terms of getting promoted but the first season back in the Scottish Premiership was probably the best team I've ever been involved in," the left-back stated.
"It was a proper rollercoaster. He was really good but it was a scary time. If we'd won at the weekend, it was a nice week and he was buzzing. But if we got beat... I always remember we lost to Ayr United at home and it felt like for about a month he kept saying, 'Just to remind you, we got beaten by f*****g Ayr United at the weekend!'
"Lenny was obviously really hard on us but he made us feel really good as well. They were just wee things but they work, he made you feel like the best player in the world. Even if you were having a bad time he'd recognise that and he'd stick by you, and it made you feel on top of the world and you'd kick on and usually do all right."
The arrival of Lee Johnson
Hibs didn't really gain a reputation for hiring and firing managers with relative haste until the 2020s, when Ross was sacked before successor Maloney was relieved of his duties after a little over four months in charge. His replacement Lee Johnson managed just 15 months before leaving after Hibs started the 2023/24 campaign with three straight defeats, while Nick Montgomery who came in after Johnson exited after eight months.
But despite Johnson's reputation as something of a polarising figure during his time at Easter Road, Stevenson remembers being impressed by his coaching and approach to the game - even if the former Bristol City and Sunderland boss attracted unfavourable comparisons with David Brent, the Ricky Gervais character from the UK comedy series The Office.
"There was stuff every day with him. He had lingo for different things, so if he shouted, 'Code Red' you'd run back to your goal or 'five-second frenzy' and you all had to run to the ball. So he had all this lingo that we had to use, and nobody was using it, and he was asking why we weren't using it. He told us it came from the City Group - 'they all use it, get with the times' - and muggins here was the first one up so the ball came to me and I opened up and shouted, 'pocket rocket' and everyone just stopped and looked at me. It would be me that would do it, wouldn't it?
"If he'd had a way of going about it.. with the knowledge he had, he was really good. The boys just didn't buy into it. He wanted us to try things that Manchester United and Manchester City were doing - if they're doing it, why shouldn't we try it?
"He wasn't a shouter, but he could say things that would be like a proper knife to the heart, stuff that was probably true. The game we played in Andorra where we got beat, I didn't play that well, and the fans were going mental as we were walking off at full-time.
"I could see him making a beeline for me and when he reached me he said, 'Stevo, if you play like that for me again, it'll be the last thing you ever do' and then walked off.
"But as a manager, the ideas he had were unbelievable. I thought he was really good - he knew distances and things I'd never even thought of, so it was disappointing the way it finished for him. But I learned so much."
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