Football

Club comes first for Ballymaguigan 'Underdog' Sean Brady

Sean Brady is having a busy time as he balances his commitments to 'The Underdogs' with his club's Ballymaguigan's bid to win Derry's intermediate title Picture by Margaret McLaughlin
Sean Brady is having a busy time as he balances his commitments to 'The Underdogs' with his club's Ballymaguigan's bid to win Derry's intermediate title Picture by Margaret McLaughlin Sean Brady is having a busy time as he balances his commitments to 'The Underdogs' with his club's Ballymaguigan's bid to win Derry's intermediate title Picture by Margaret McLaughlin

The McFeely Group Derry IFC final: Ballymaguigan v Banagher (Saturday, 4.45pm, Owenbegg)

HAVING spent much of the past few months bearing the underdog tag literally, Ballymaguigan’s Sean Brady is hoping it sits well for the loughshore club tomorrow afternoon.

To followers of the Derry club scene, Brady is among its most recognisable faces.

His playing days with the ‘Quigan go right back to their 2001 success, when he was a 16-year-old sub.

Now 33, he has a shot at a fourth intermediate title when they face hot favourites Banagher in tomorrow’s decider.

But that’s not all that’s on his plate.

He’s also in the thick of the TG4 hit show ‘Underdogs’, which sees a squad of players who never quite made the grade at inter-county level come together to take on All-Ireland champions Dublin in a challenge game.

It’s understood that game will take place at Parnell Park on October 19, but having signed up with the hope of a crack at proving himself, it’s taken a back seat since his club’s IFC semi-final win over Drumsurn.

The Underdogs were due to play UCD in a challenge game on Wednesday evening, and they are bound for a training camp this weekend, neither of which Brady will be involved in.

“The club comes first obviously, but when you’ve put in all this effort you want to be there or thereabouts against the county team.

“Any other year we were out by the end of August so you’d be free to play, but tomorrow night we play UCD and I’ll not be playing.

“The camp’s this weekend and I’ll not be there. You only really have three or four more training sessions before the county game.

“It does affect you but I wouldn’t swap it for playing in a county final.”

Brady had a one-year flirtation with the Derry panel when Brian McIver called him in for the 2015 campaign, but beyond the McKenna Cup he saw just a few minutes of a League tie with Mayo.

He has always believed that he had the ability to hold his own at that level, but says that his indiscipline has cost him down the years.

“I didn’t join the show to get on the Derry panel again. I joined it because I felt as if I wasted my talent through indiscipline, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to give it a go coming to the end of my career.”

It was something he referenced in the opening episode of The Underdogs, when he told selectors Paul Galvin, Ray Silke and Valerie Mulcahy of his regret at being sent off in a county final replay in 2008.

Ballymaguigan were beaten by Greenlough that day, and while they recovered to beat the same opposition the following year in what was their last final appearance, the red card has stuck with him.

“Even now you still feel as if you let the team down. I know it was two yellows on an oul wet day, nothing mad only two late tackles, but we were beaten by a point and you still feel if you’d been on the field you might have been able to do something.

“It’s probably why it took me so long to get on a Derry panel. When you get older and wiser, you understand that managers couldn’t take a risk on you.

“I always felt I was good enough to be on a squad, but when you’re younger you maybe don’t understand why. But when you’re older you realise that a manager couldn’t trust you.”

It’s been a busy few months.

On one weekend he travelled to Dublin on the Saturday for an army training camp, came back up for a club league game on Sunday and then back down to Sunday evening for a challenge game with the Irish Army.

But the man’s insatiable. Every game you go to, he’s there, and a lot of the time now fulfilling his latest venture of #BradysUpdates on Twitter.

Before he tries to squeeze his way into the team for the game with Dublin, his brief on Saturday will be to take the fight to Banagher.

“We’re not going there to make up the numbers either,’’ he declared.

“We have to have a good day where everything has to go for us, but anything could happen. Everybody loves an underdog.”