AS soon as Liam ‘Baker’ Bradley entered the room he owned it. A year after leading his native Glenullin to the Holy Grail, he decided to throw his hat in the ring for the Antrim job.
Derry didn’t want him; Antrim clearly did.
It was the autumn of 2008. Having won the last-ever Tommy Murphy Cup, outgoing manager Jody Gormley had left something to build upon. In trying to source a successor, Antrim chairman John McSparran wanted a player on the interview panel.
Mick McCann agreed.
For McCann, ‘Baker’ was the best candidate by a country mile. He liked the Derry man’s swaggering self-belief.
It was just what Antrim needed.
“I remember him coming in for the interview and he kind of took over the room,” McCann remembers.
“I’ll never forget Baker’s closing line. What they did with all the candidates was, they asked them would they like to say anything before they finished.
“As ‘Baker’ was leaving, he said: ‘Just remember, lads, I’m a winner.’ And that was it. That was his closing line. When they asked me who I thought should get it, that’s who I said. I thought ‘Baker’ was the right man for the job.”
With the Glenullin man at the helm, Antrim football was about to embark on an unforgettable journey.
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THERE were rumblings of revolution around the small village of Glenullin in 2005. Bellaghy and Ballinderry were still the big noise in Derry football, but the guerrillas of Glenullin were coming.
It was Liam Bradley’s generation who last won the Derry senior championship in 1985. They reached a semi-final in ’89 and didn’t compete in another one again until 2002.
In ’01, the club won a North Derry minor ‘B’ title and claimed an Ulster League title six years later.
“For us it was a generational thing,” says Derry’s 2002 All-Ireland minor winning captain and Glenullin clubman Gerard O’Kane.
“There were a few of us who were offspring of the ’85 team. It’s the way it works with country teams, it’s a cyclical thing. By about ’05, ‘Baker’ had taken most of the team at some stage at underage, so if anyone was going to take us to a championship it was going to be him.”
The ‘Baker’ is O’Kane’s uncle. He estimates ‘Baker’ coached him for over half of his playing career.
“I’d be first cousins with Eoin and Paddy (Baker’s sons),” O’Kane says. “I’ve been playing football with them since I was three or four.
“I also remember ‘Baker’ putting me to bed and reading me bed-time stories, true as God (laughing), when I was five or six. When he managed the senior team, ‘Baker’ and me would fall out, then go for a pint, call each other names and go for a pint again…”
In ’05, Glenullin had torched Craigbane with a bit to spare – but the ‘Baker’ wasn’t happy. On Tuesday night at training, nobody escaped his wrath.
“We won and Paddy [Bradley] scored 0-10 or something – none of us played badly – but ‘Baker’ came into the changing room and I’ll never forget it. He got us in a circle and he gave all of us a touch. Like, I had played well in the game.
“And Baker comes to me and says: ‘This time three years ago, Pat Spillane was saying you were the best minor footballer about. What the f*ck does Pat Spillane know? He knows f*ck all. You haven’t had a good game in three years…’
“I felt like saying: ‘Hold on a f*cking minute: Paddy scored 10 and I set up four of them…’ But you know when to take it on the chin, and that was one of those nights you did.”
O’Kane adds: “The perception of Baker, though, is a bit misconstrued at times… He knows how to manage a room. It’s not all about reading the riot act; he’s savvy enough that way.”
Glenullin had lost three semi-finals in six years in the 'Noughties'. In ’06, the Loup beat them by a point in the last four.
But come the following season there was enough hurt to drive them to championship glory for the first time in 22 years.
In a memorable semi-final, Glenullin really and truly announced their arrival by annihilating defending champions Ballinderry.
“The big game was the semi-final against Ballinderry down in Bellaghy,” ‘Baker’ says. “It was probably the best display from a Glenullin team ever. We ripped them apart and won by something like 10 points.”
It took them two attempts to overcome Bellaghy in the decider at Celtic Park.
Eoghan Brown, who ended the 2007 season top scorer, had the chance to win it the first day but his stoppage-time free drifted wide of the posts, and Glenullin deservedly edged the replay.
The ‘Baker’ had successfully moulded a team of young and old footballers into winners. The O’Kane brothers – Gerard and John – in the half-back line, Brian ‘Tiddles’ Mullan minding the house. Dominic McIlvar was one of many leaders in the class of ’07 too, the evergreen Ruairi Boylan and the uncoachable football intelligence of the manager’s sons – Eoin and Paddy – in the forward line.
“It was probably the highlight of my career to be quite honest,” says ‘Baker’, “because I had won a championship with the club in ’85 while playing with them and I had the chance to manage them.”
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IN his youth, soccer came a close second to Gaelic football. The family home was situated in a cul-de-sac with five other houses. The kids in the street played soccer morning, noon and night.
‘Let me be George Best.’
‘I’ll be Bobby Moore.’
Liam Bradley was always Joe Baker – one of Arsenal’s leading lights of the mid-60s who scored 93 goals for the Londoners.
‘I’ll be the Baker; I’ll be the Baker.’
The nickname has stuck ever since.
Winning a county championship in 1985 was the pinnacle of Liam Bradley’s playing career and despite a serious knee injury at 24, he played on and formed local soccer club Kilrea United in 1992. The local junior soccer club thrives to this day.
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JOHN McSparran rubber-stamped Liam Bradley’s appointment as Antrim’s senior and U21 football manager ahead of the 2009 season. Reflecting on the ‘Baker Years’ [2009 to 2012] which yielded back-to-back promotions to Division Two, an Ulster final place in his debut season and an oft-times forgotten Championship win over Galway at Casement Park in 2012, McSparran said the Derry man was “bloody easy to work with”.
“There was all this talk about dieticians and nutritionists – this grandiose way of doing things – but the thing I most vividly remember was when I asked ‘Baker’ about his backroom team, he said: ‘I don’t want any of those f*****s near me!’”
Anything that ‘Baker’ needed, Tony McCollum would say: “Leave that with me.”
Training weekends. Physio treatment. Training gear. Training facilities. The Antrim footballers wanted for nothing.
“There was no negativity in Antrim during my time,” Baker says. “You’d read all this stuff about player expenses in the media but every first Tuesday of the month Tony [McCollum] had the cheques for the players.”
If there was such a thing as a “turning point” in Antrim’s cursed fortunes, it was the night ‘Baker’ was told several of his U21 players “went on the piss” after losing in the Championship to Tyrone.
At the next training session, ‘Baker’ picked off the ‘guilty party’ one by one in front of the rest of the squad.
“I made them explain their actions and I think I gained more respect that night from the rest of the players. That night was probably the turning point for Antrim football. They saw the management team meant business and they knew we weren’t going to take any more bullshit.”
There were more rollickings than the Antrim players care to remember. Trailing in a crucial Division Four game down in Carrick-on-Shannon against Mickey Moran’s Leitrim in the spring of ‘09, ‘Baker’ ripped into his players.
Goalkeeper John Finucane got a touch. So, too, did Tomas McCann and whoever else happened to be in the manager’s eye-line.
“We were maybe four down at half-time and we turned it around and got a draw. We probably took more out of that game than any other. A point was good enough for promotion and we went down and hammered Waterford.”
Rough around the edges, Mick McCann liked the ‘Baker’.
“He was that confrontational and that straight to the point,” says the Cargin man. “He was a great man-manager in the sense he’ll get the best out of you. He could probably choose his words a wee bit better in some instances. People did fall out with him. But it was all about winning.
“A player would say to him: ‘You didn’t tell me I was dropped.’ ‘Don’t f****** need to tell you you’re dropped.’
“As he grew into the role he developed that side of his management, but some of the things he came out with, you’d be roaring with laughter.
“Nowadays, everything is about tactics and set-ups – ‘Baker’ wasn’t that type of manager. He wouldn’t spend weeks working on specific tactics. He picked his best team all the time. He knew a Championship footballer. And he got his match-ups bang on nearly every week.”
On a rainy day in Ballybofey, Antrim’s world changed on the Championship stage in ’09 when they upset favourites Donegal. Although still in his teens, John Joe Doherty’s Donegal pinned their hopes on celebrated man-child Michael Murphy.
There was only one man for Murphy: Colin Brady of St Gall’s.
“A few weeks before we played Donegal I remember getting a DVD of Michael Murphy,” ‘Baker’ says.
“It showed every bit about Murphy, every way he turned. You give that to Brady and you knew he would do his homework on it. Colin Brady, to me, was a class, class corner-back. He was a brilliant man-marker and any time we needed a job done or somebody marked he was the first man we’d turn to. I just can’t describe how good Brady was for Antrim that day.
“And when Tomas [McCann] scored that goal midway through the second half, I knew we were going to win.”
FOR ‘Baker’, the highlight on the sidelines with Antrim wasn’t Ballybofey. It wasn’t a balmy Saturday night in Clones when they beat Cavan in an Ulster semi-final.
Nor the Ulster final against Tyrone or Kerry in Tullamore seven days later.
In fact, it was a game that Antrim didn’t even win – but it was still the most satisfying performance in the manager’s eyes.
It was Saturday June 26, 2010, Newbridge: A Round One All-Ireland Qualifier. Kieran McGeeney’s Kildare juggernaut versus ‘Baker’ Bradley’s Antrim.
The Lilywhites had been humbled by modest Louth and Antrim bowed out to Tyrone on the provincial stage. Extra-time couldn’t separate them as both headed to Casement Park for a replay the following Saturday.
The mercurial Kevin McGourty of St Gall’s had opted out of the Antrim panel in Baker’s first year – but returned to the fold in 2010.
McGourty’s performance in Newbridge was one of the best ‘Baker’ had seen in all his years managing teams.
“It was the day that Dermot Earley’s father was buried. It was a very, very emotional evening. We should have won that game. The stand-out thing about that game was the half-time stand-off between the two teams. Neither of us would come out of the changing room.
“‘Geezer’ liked to take 15 or 20 minutes at half-time and I said: ‘Right lads, we’re going to play these guys at their own game. We’re gonna sit ’til they move.’
“The referee came in, the linesmen came in, they blew the whistle four or five times and we eventually sent them out. But Kildare moved first.”
Laughing at the memory now, ‘Baker’ adds: “’Geezer’ was standing waiting between the changing rooms and the pitch and he shouted and I drove it back into him. I wanted to show the boys that I was not going to lie down and they’re not going to lie down…
“That night, Kevin McGourty played the shirt off his back. He was outstanding…
“I remember we played Tyrone in the first round of the Championship in 2010 and we were struggling with about 20 minutes to go and Kevin came on, and the first thing he did was put Sean Cavanagh on his arse. He had no respect for any opponent. Kevin McGourty knew how good he was. He was a fantastic player. Any aspect of the game he excelled – he could field the ball with anybody, there were certain times in games when the team needed a lift and McGourty was always that guy. He would pull one out of the clouds or he would get a great hit in. He was just a top class player.”
‘Baker’ is the first to admit that he was blessed with some fantastic players during his two spells with Antrim (he came back for one more season in 2014).
Colin Brady, Justin Crozier, James Loughrey, Mick and Tomas McCann, Terry O’Neill, Kevin Niblock, Paddy Cunningham, Kevin McGourty, Tony Scullion…
“When I read new managers coming in and saying: ‘I need a three or a five-year plan, or ‘our strength and conditioning isn’t as good as other counties…’
“Look, at the end of the day, I was going into a county with good footballers. I don’t care what anybody says: there are at least 25 good footballers in every county. If you can get those guys playing together. Myself, Niall [Conway] and Paddy [McNeill] knew there were class players in Antrim.”
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SINCE those halcyon days, ‘Baker’ has lit up the sidelines everywhere he’s been, including Malin and Ballinascreen - but all roads lead back to home in 2021.
The Derry job eluded him during the ‘Noughties’. But Derry’s loss was undoubtedly Antrim’s gain.
“He definitely should have got the Derry job,” says Gerard O’Kane.
“He was probably burned once or twice. You hear people are lined up for jobs… What I think counted against him was Eoin and Paddy being there and I’ve always said that. Maybe people thought: ‘We’re not having ‘Baker’ because the Bradleys will have too much control,’ but he had more experience than anybody and he still never got it.”
With customary swagger, the former Antrim manager insists he would have won an Ulster title with Derry if given the chance.
“I was around the team in ’06 but I didn’t enjoy it,” he says.
“When you look back on the players Derry had: Gerard O’Kane, Sean Marty Lockhart, Kevin McGuckin, Kevin McCloy, you had Fergal Doherty, Conleith Gilligan, Enda Muldoon, Liam Hinphey, you had Eoin and Paddy. Derry had a super set of players at that time and, yes, they won a National League but they still underachieved.
“I would have loved a crack at the job at that time, but my face just didn’t fit with a few boys around the county board.
“I was never going to get the job. If I'd got the job back then I feel Derry wouldn’t be still waiting on an Ulster Championship. You don’t understand the talent those boys had. Granted, Tyrone were a good side, as well as Armagh, but Derry had unbelievable talent.”
Celebrating his 60th birthday this year, Liam ‘Baker’ Bradley has 10 grandchildren to keep him occupied and is chipping away at his golf handicap of 15.
He remains addicted to the sidelines and hopes to put a bit of shape on Glenullin next season.
In the intervening years, the ‘Baker’ hasn’t changed a bit. Still roguish and bullish as ever whose bark will always be worse than his bite. A Derry man who is remembered with great fondness and affection among Saffron supporters of a certain vintage and dared them to dream.
