ON the winding road that sweeps down to the small rural village of Glenullin, the towering white windmills move at their own pace, pushing away the stubborn mist before becoming engulfed again.
It’s a Saturday afternoon and there’s not a sinner around these parts. As the road makes a smooth left-hand swing into the village, the 4G pitch on your right is just a gaping space.
To your left, Glenullin’s pitch is a slightly overgrown lush green with its goalmouths cordoned off.
It hasn’t felt a juvenile’s meaningful stud sink into its soft sod for what feels like an eternity.
There’s a sprightliness to Paddy Bradley’s movement as he gets out of his car in the club car-park. At 39, he still looks fit enough for a cameo appearance in the green and yellow of Glenullin.
He takes me on a mini tour of the empty club grounds – the fully kitted out gym, changing areas, steam rooms, the clubhouse, before we wander onto the pitch.
He points to a new site beyond the 4G pitch across the road the club is planning to build on.
The short drive to his home takes no more than 60 seconds. It’s a typical lockdown Saturday in the Bradley household.
Ciara, his wife, is a community midwife. An Aghyaran woman.
Ciarán, the youngest of their four children, is two and takes refuge behind a cushion on the sofa.
Tadhg (11), Finian (8) and Tomás (6) are quiet as mice in the games room down the hallway.
For the next couple of hours, we take up residence in the front room. Wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses, we’re here to cast an eye over a quite brilliant football career and a coaching journey that is still very much in its infancy.
You could pick your own starting point from a career that lit up the ‘Noughties’ as much as any other.
“In that 20-year era, outside of Peter Canavan, he was the best there was,” club and county team-mate and next door neighbour Gerard O’Kane states without fear of contradiction.
“Paddy was one of the best forwards in the country – there is no doubt about it,” says ex-Tyrone ace Philip Jordan. “Before we played Derry he would have been the focus of our attentions because he was so important to them.
“Their whole game-plan was around getting Paddy the ball, maybe it was to the detriment of their team at times, but he was that kind of individual who demanded it.
“You knew once he got the ball, no matter where he was on the field, there was a good chance there’d be a score at the end of it.”
From the moment the tape-recorder beeps and is placed on the coffee table, Bradley leans forward and rests his forearms on his knees.
In interview parlance, he’s an open book and wiser for the few additional years.
Do we start with the biggest influence on his career? His father. The ‘Baker’.
From Eoin and Paddy were no height, the simplicity and urgency of Baker’s words echo still.
‘Take the man on, take him on. Steal his ground. Don’t turn back on yourself…’
Or we could start with the great Eamonn Coleman and just how sore he was on the precocious Glenullin teenager.
To ease into this interview, we could start with him finding the top corner of the Westmeath net at Croke in 2004. It's what perfection looks like on a football field.
Or the overdue Allstar finally arriving in ’07 after four previous nominations, and reaching the Promised Land with Glenullin.
Or listening to a goose-bumped rendition of Labi Siffre’s ‘Something Inside So Strong’ in Paudge Quinn’s just knowing they were not losing against Tyrone in ’01.
The National League crowns. Beating Kerry and Tyrone. Or falling apart against Fermanagh in Healy Park. Another Ulster slips from Derry's grasp.
Soloing the ball soccer-style against the Red Hands at Celtic Park in ’08. And big Sean Cavanagh telling him in the Gaff nightclub out in Sydney just what that piece of showmanship did for Tyrone.
The creative tensions with Damian Cassidy and Gerard O’Kane always passing the ball to the two Bradleys.
Walking away before the Carlow game. And coming back.
Going on the lash a week before an All-Ireland Championship joust with Laois in '05. The two cruciates. The comebacks.
Beyond the swagger and far from the media’s glare, there was pure gluttony for hard work.
Always watching the game. Always the student. Learning how Canavan moved. Listening to older, wiser heads. Playing with his heroes – Anthony and Henry.
That infamous interview and being told: ‘You’ll never play for Derry again.’ Waiting on Brian McIver’s call.
Derry’s door being slammed in his face.
Ripping it up for Glenullin knowing you were still the best forward in the county, and corner-backs scratching their heads asking: ‘How is Bradley not playing for Derry?’
And how the seasons rolled into each other and Paddy Bradley’s name permanently at the top of the scoring charts.
The endless double-teaming. The haters. The friendships. Paul Murphy slapping his thighs telling Paddy Crozier at half-time against the Dubs, 'I'm fine, Paddy. I'm fine.'
The scandalous consistency for the best part of 14 years. And then knowing there were no more comebacks.
Just memories. And Derry not knowing what they had until it’s gone.
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WHERE do you begin with Paddy Bradley?
No better place than making a phone call to Eamonn Coleman one night in 2000 and asking the legendary manager why he wasn’t in the Derry team for the National League final against Meath.
“I played under Eamon in 2000/01,” he says. “Eamon just called it as he seen it. What a manager. No nonsense. If you chat to any boys at the time, Eamon was very, very sore on me, to the point where I was for leaving panels.
“I was enjoying my nights out, with the likes of Kevin McCloy. We were going to training but we were still living the student life up in Belfast as well."
Earmarked from his minor days as a fantastic scoring talent, Bradley impressed in the early throes of the National League in 2000, but lost a bit of form towards the latter end of the campaign that finished with Coleman’s men claiming the Division One title.
In the first League final tie against Meath, Bradley, just turned 19, was on the bench as he watched Coleman introduce almost every attacking substitute he had except him.
Sandwiched in between the two bouts with Meath was Derry’s Ulster Championship clash with Cavan.
“I was telling my Da about it and he said: ‘Ring the man.’ And I said: ‘I’m not ringing Eamon Coleman, the man who managed Derry to an All-Ireland. And tell him what?’
“And my Da says: ‘Tell him how you feel.’”
Bradley’s mind hurtles back to a Monday night. He’s standing in his mother’s bedroom with the portable phone in his hand.
“I’ll never forget it. So I rang him.”
‘Who is it?... Paddy Bradley? What are you ringing about?’ enquired Coleman.
‘Well Eamon, I was just wondering…’
‘If you’ve something to say, come out and say it.’
“By the end of the phone call I was saying: ‘Eamonn, you haven’t a f***king clue. I’m the best forward you have and you need to be playing me.’
‘You think you’re better than such and such….?’
“Deep inside me I believed it but I never expressed it or showed it. So I turned up to training in Owenbeg on the Tuesday night and I thought, I better show it.
“Come the Thursday night, Eamon names the team and you could hear a pin drop whenever he named me corner-forward. I couldn’t believe it. And that was it.
“He picked me for Cavan having not played the week before [against Meath] and him having played five forward subs before me.
“He didn’t talk to me before the Cavan game. I was nervous. Now, obviously boys like Anthony [Tohill] and Henry [Downey] would come and talk to me.
“I scored three points in the first half against Cavan, it was my debut. But I had to come off with shin splints at half-time. I wanted it to go so well, and I was crying when I had to come off.
“All I wanted to do was to play for Derry. There were tears and I remember Eamonn walking by me and leaning over saying: ‘I always knew it was in you, Bradley.’ And the wee cheeky grin…"
He adds: “That was the class of Eamonn Coleman.
“We reached the Ulster final that year. I wouldn’t say I’ve a pile of regrets about it because I was young. I was marking Enda McNulty, Justin McNulty was marking Enda [Muldoon] and Ger Reid was playing sweeper. They were three seasoned players, 15 stone, big men, animals.
“We were well beaten that day and I was taken off, but I had no qualms. But after that year I thought: ‘I am a county footballer.’”
For Bradley, the Coleman years were all too brief. The Ballymaguigan native, Tyrone man Marty McElkennon and Damian Cassidy – the team's ‘eyes in the stand’ - made for some managerial trio in 2000/01.
And yet while Derry were still very much one of the country’s heavyweights they couldn’t knit enough consecutive performances together to win Ulster, while an All-Ireland final appearance eluded them.
On any given Championship Sunday, they’d hit all the high notes. The next, they’d crash and burn, which became an all-too-familiar theme of Bradley’s inter-county career.
In 2001, Derry fell to Eugene McKenna and Art McRory’s Tyrone side in the Ulster semi-finals – with Bradley hitting five points – but this was new terrain.
A novel second chance was created by the back door that year, and as fortune had it the two rivals collided again in the newly created All-Ireland quarter-finals at Clones.
“Tyrone were already complaining about having to play a team they'd already beaten,” Bradley recalls.
“We knew we’d their number. There was a DVD created that day when we were in Paudge Quinn’s. Martin McElkennon was training us, a great trainer, Damian Cassidy was there, a great number two to Eamonn.
“The three of them were very, very good together. The soundtrack on the DVD was ‘Something Inside So Strong’, shivers-down-your-spine stuff.
“In the first game, Paul McFlynn was coming out with the ball and Canavan met him chest on, yellow card. So there were different clips that were put together, but the DVD finished with a slowed down version of that clash and it zoomed into Canavan’s face. Teeth gritted. We thought: ‘There’s a man who hates Derry. Look at him.’
“We went to Clones. Everybody to a man… ah, we were brilliant that day. It was probably one of my greatest days [scoring 1-3] in a Derry jersey, particularly with the men you were playing with – Anthony [Tohill], Gary Coleman…”
Yet, that old foe – inconsistency – came back to bite them three weeks later in the All-Ireland semi-final against a Galway side inspired by Matthew Clancy, Pádraic Joyce and Derek Savage.
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LIKE every parent, Bradley’s finding lockdown tough. He’s a Head of Assessment and Data teacher at St Conor’s College – a recent amalgamation of Kilrea and Clady (Greenlough). He’s spinning more plates than he can count as his wife Ciara’s job can’t be done remotely.
If he’s not preparing lessons, he’s doing zoom meetings with his teaching colleagues and setting up zoom classes. And then there’s the endless paperwork and trying to home-school three boys while trying to keep young Ciarán occupied.
He's not sleeping well because his head’s full of the next day’s work.
In the evening time he’s preparing zoom sessions for the Derry U20s and the Loup boys – but can’t really get his teeth into either until there are return dates on the table.
There was a time if Derry were playing outside his front door he’d have drawn the curtains. It took him “four or five years” to make his peace with how his inter-county career ended.
After coming back from a second cruciate operation, he fully expected to be part of Brian McIver’s squad in 2013. But the call never came despite leading the scoring charts in Derry club football.
Perhaps McIver thought Bradley no longer had it in him after two cruciate operations and being the wrong side of 30.
Still, Bradley would have liked the opportunity to finish his county career on his own terms.
Once John Brennan’s Derry side exited the Ulster Championship to Jim McGuinness’s surging Donegal team, the Oak Leaf men bowed out a game later in the All-Ireland series to Longford.
The following day, Bradley did an interview with the BBC where he criticised many aspects of the county and its structures. He paid dearly for his forthright opinions as he didn’t wear the Oak Leaf jersey again.
To this day, he doesn’t regret the interview.
“Heading into the Ulster Championship game with Donegal in 2012, we thought we were in a good place. Physically, I thought I was in a good place.
“I marked Karl Lacey that day. I had great battles with Karl Lacey over the years but that day in particular Karl Lacey cleaned my clock. He spent the whole day bombing forward from full-back. We were hammered, beaten out the gate.
“Donegal had a lot of players like that – Lacey, the McGees, Neil Gallagher, Christy Toye – all talented footballers but were on receiving end of some stupid defeats, but they just got it together, as you can do. Everything fell into place for them if you have the right man in charge.
“We went in the back door and Longford beat us. I was captain of the team and I was disappointed. I gave an interview the next day.
“I wasn’t critical of any one individual. I was critical of the county board, I was critical of the management team. I wasn’t critical of John’s managerial capabilities. When you think back, we’d boys lying on the physio tables and the same boys a week before Championship popped up and made themselves available and got playing. I was critical of the players, I was critical of myself.
“Afterwards, I was told by a very prominent man on the Monday morning I’d never play for Derry again. A boy in the know.
“I thought, why? I knew the daggers were out for me a wee bit because I was always the GPA rep in Derry; I was wanting the team to do better, and why we weren't getting the same support as the Donegals, Tyrones and Armaghs...
“I've listened to the interview back many a time… I actually said there was an apathy about playing for Derry – and there was at that stage. It didn’t mean enough.”
A few months later, Bradley was struck down with another cruciate injury. He followed the rehab to the letter, went over and above to get back in contention. But the call never came.
There was no heated exchange, no blow-up with the new manager. Just silence, a desperate, eerie, acrimonious silence that signalled a premature end.
And still he kept tearing up the club scene.
“I wouldn’t have watched Derry for a long time,” he says.
“I was bitter. I was angry with the way things happened. But I’ve come around. Derry is my county, I spent 14 years between playing for the seniors and minors – so I thought I had to get over it.
“The men who made those decisions are gone. I want my young boys to play for Derry. Derry is bigger than anybody. So I was keen to get back involved. The U20s is a massive job.
“For me, it’s like a second chance. I know the county board will give me and the players their 100 percent backing.
“I’ve already said this to the U20 players: ‘I’m learning from my mistakes as a player. If we’re doing this, we’re doing this right.’”
In Monday's Part Two: “Da would have to take a lot of credit for 2007. He was manager and I was captain. The greatest achievement I’ll ever have in football was winning a club championship.”
