Football

Soccer has helped me says Bradley

EOIN Bradley believes that his spells with Coleraine and Glenavon have made him a better Gaelic footballer. "I think the soccer has helped me. In the last two years I was a lot more consistent with Glenullin. I think the soccer helped me. It made me sharper. "It's a different type of training. People don't realise the difference. Gaelic training is completely different to soccer.

"Soccer is all short, sharp stuff and games of five a-side whereas Gaelic training you are running up and down a pitch. "The two of them actually combine very well."

Glenavon manager Gary Hamilton is convinced that if Bradley (right) had focused on soccer from a young age then he could have played at the highest level in England.

A plasterer by trade, would a professional career have appealed to Bradley? "It definitely would," he said.

"Gary played across the water.

He played for Blackburn. He said to me that I would have made it no bother. "At the end of the day, if I had done that, I wouldn't have made the friends which I have now. I wouldn't have won a Championship with Glenullin and I wouldn't have enjoyed some brilliant days with Derry.

"Yes, it would have been great, and it would have been a different career path, but over there is different. There are hundreds of thousands of people playing soccer over there. You do not have the same numbers here.

"I am still glad I took the opportunity to play soccer. There are not many people who can say they played for their club and their county, plus they played soccer in the Irish League. I have done all that."