DERRY’S former Allstar forward Paddy Bradley is aiming for success at club and county level in 2021 after accepting the county footballers’ U20 managerial post and confirmed he will be remaining with Loup.
The Glenullin clubman will be assisted by Johnny McGurk and Chris Collins, the latter staying on after outgoing boss and Tyrone man Mickey Donnelly stepped down following three fruitful years with the Oak Leaf U20s.
The 2021 club and county split season, Bradley insists, makes doing the two jobs possible – with Stevie O’Neill of Tyrone trying something similar with the Antrim footballers and Dungiven.
“My first port of call was to contact Loup,” said Bradley.
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“We had a fairly good season and were unlucky to be beaten in the semi-final of the championship [a one-point defeat to Magherafelt].
“We have a good group of players that came on leaps and bounds and there’s a really good committee to work with there too. I would never have done anything without their blessing.
“The thing about the U20s is it’s going to be over by March/April time… If schools football goes ahead in January and February, there might be a limit to how much hands-on I can be with the U20s.
“I felt I could do the two – one is not going to affect the other. Loup and the county board were happy enough with that and, in any case, there is more of that going on now with the split season.
“It’s going to take a lot of work on my part, January through to April, but the fact it is a short season we’ll get a good run at the U20s and hopefully we’re successful and the club will start to warm up towards summer time.
“I suppose it’s like all competitions, it’ll be knock-out, short and sharp. It’s not like I’ll be juggling two jobs. If that would have been the situation I wouldn’t have considered doing both.”
Bradley’s appointment comes on the back of Derry’s exciting new plans to restructure Gaelic Games in the county, a tenet of which is following the Kerry template of creating regional teams in a bid to get more representation from intermediate and junior ranks at elite level.
“I read some of the proposals and what Damian [Cassidy, committee head] has said about counties all over the country who have a good mix of senior, intermediate and junior players at county level.
“Predominantly, four or five senior clubs in Derry have produced the county senior team over the last number of years, so if we can get more junior and intermediate clubs playing at a higher standard in different competitions and filtering more players into the county senior, U20 and minor, it’s obviously going to benefit Derry football in the long run.
“People would always say Derry is one of the most competitive championships and it is at senior level but there are gaps between the senior, intermediate and junior championships and the county board are obviously trying to balance that out.”
Regarded as one of the best forwards in Ireland during the ‘Noughties’, Bradley revealed he had considered putting his name forward for the Antrim vacancy a few weeks ago but said his “heart” was in Derry.
“I follow MacRory football and Derry football at U20 and U17, and I was involved at minor football for a while, so I would know a lot of the current U20 players.
“I’m inheriting a very strong squad. I obviously don’t them all of the players, but the hope would be to try and get some trials going and get the panel up and running because we’re not going to have much preparation time with them as they could be with their colleges and universities.”
Bradley also expressed his enthusiasm for the two men he’ll be working alongside at U20 level – McGurk and Collins.
“Johnny is somebody I looked up to growing up,” he said.
“I know him well and he knows that age group really well, given his involvement with Lavey and how successful they’ve been at underage, winning minor championships and he was working with the ‘Convent’ too.
“Chris Collins has agreed to stay on. He was obviously with Mickey Donnelly and Chris is a very good coach. He knows the players, he knows Owenbeg, he knows the process and he can get things done.
“They’re certainly not yes-men - we are three strong-minded people but I think we’ll work well with each other.”
Derry won the inaugural U20 Ulster title in 2018 before suffering a heavy loss to Tyrone in the 2019 decider. Shorn of many key players in the 2020 series, they fell to Hugh McGettigan's Antrim in the quarter-finals back in February.
To walk away from the Loup now, Bradley says, would have been exceptionally difficult especially given how close they came to reaching this year’s county final.
“They showed last year, with a wee bit of structure and a wee bit of momentum, that they can be one of the top teams in the county.
“Obviously you’ve got Slaughtneil, Magherafelt and Glen, who would be many people’s top three, but I don’t think the Loup are a million miles away from it.”
