Making his MARK
The young Tyrone lad who is lighting up Liverpool is the one that got away from an Ireland point of view...
Bradley is a former Gaelic footballer He has had to bide his time at Anfield
IT has been a lean few years for Northern Ireland in terms of established Premier League talent, so perhaps it’s a understandable if some supporters got carried away with 20-year-old Conor Bradley’s assured Premier League debut for Liverpool at the Vitality Stadium. Former world super-bantamweight champion Carl Frampton even drew a parallel with the greatest player to come out of the North.
‘Here’s a shout! Bradley is going to be Northern Ireland’s highest profile player after (George) Best,’ the impressed Frampton tweeted following last week’s game against Bournemouth. Maybe, there’s a touch of hyperbole in that, but it underlines how excited people are about Bradley.
And it’s not just in the North. Bradley has looked to the manor born as he has stood in for the injured Trent Alexander-Arnold over the past couple of weeks, continuing impressively last night in the second leg of the League Cup semi-final at Craven Cottage.
When Alexander-Arnold suffered his knee injury in the FA Cup win over Arsenal, Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp had no hesitation about putting the young Tyrone native into the fray — and he responded by containing the threat of Gabriel Martinelli.
As much as an able deputy for Alexander-Arnold, Bradley has all the attributes to be Séamus Coleman’s long-term replacement at right-back in the Ireland side. Except he was born on the wrong side of the Tyrone-Donegal border.
If you imagine the map of Northern Ireland, the part of Tyrone that juts into Donegal and the Republic like a thumb is the rural parish of Aghyaran. The village is the most westerly point of the North. Before Bradley, their most famous sporting son was Ronan McNamee, the former All-Star full-back who helped the county to All-Ireland football glory in 2021.
Bradley is also a former Gaelic footballer. He played underage at the same club as McNamee and comes from a nationalist background. But his potential has been earmarked since his early teens. And the IFA (Irish Football Association), having been burnt by losing the likes of Shane Duffy and James McClean in the past, knew they had to act decisively and swiftly. It was Ian Baraclough, the former Sligo Rovers boss, who capped the young Tyrone man at senior international level (a 3-0 friendly win over Malta) two months before his 18th birthday when ‘only a few football nerds had heard of him’ as Klopp pointed out.
Bradley has already played 13 times for the North, making his competitive debut when Baraclough brought him off the bench during a goalless draw with Switzerland a couple of months later.
That pushed the young defender past the three-cap threshold that meant he wasn’t able to switch nationality, not that it ever seemed to be on the cards.
Ireland Under 21 manager Jim Crawford grew accustomed to fielding questions about Bradley in press conferences. He admitted that there was interest from the FAI, but the North had moved so quickly to nail down his allegiance, it was never going to go anywhere.
‘He was someone who we were certainly interested in and we were talking to third parties about him. But then all of a sudden, he gets called up to the senior team and played with the
North, so that was that. But anyone with that talent, of course you would want him on board,’ said Crawford.
From his early days playing with St Patrick’s in Castlederg, Bradley has been attracting attention. Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea, as well as Liverpool, were all keeping tabs on the youngster as he moved to Dungannon United Youths while still juggling Gaelic football and cross-country running.
Moving to Liverpool on a scholarship in the summer of 2019, he’s had to bide his time to get his opportunity at Anfield. He starred for the club’s U21 side prior to making his first competitive appearance in the League Cup against Norwich in September 2021. He played twice more in that campaign as Liverpool made it to Wembley, claiming the trophy with a penalty shoot-out win over Chelsea with Ireland goalkeeper Caoimhín Kelleher scoring the winning spot-kick. Klopp used him sparingly, although he did play him a couple of times in Europe, including against AC Milan.
Liverpool farmed him out to Bolton in League One last season and in the brutal and unforgiving environment of the third tier, Bradley thrived. He scored seven goals and had six assists from right-back during his 53 appearances and was voted the club’s Player of the Year and Player’s Player of the Year. He even helped Bolton to some rare silverware at Wembley as they beat Plymouth 4-0 to win the Papa John’s Trophy.
During his time at Bolton, Liverpool remained in constant contact. When he came back to Melwood in the summer, the feeling was that Bradley would be used in pre-season. However, a stress fracture in his back curtailed his prospects, forcing him to be patient again.
There had been a lot of interest from Championship clubs about taking Bradley on loan for the season but the Reds insisted he was going nowhere and told him that he was going to be part of the first-team squad.
And he has become another success story of the Liverpool academy — one of the many areas of the club that have been revitalised and re-energised under their charismatic manager.
‘I’ve dreamed of this from when I was five-years-old,’ the lifelong Liverpool fan told Sky Sports after his top-flight debut. ‘I have been waiting for my Premier League debut for a while, so to get it now, I am really proud.’
Bradley’s assured and energetic performance against the Cherries — he set up one of Diogo Jota’s goals and was only denied a goal himself when Neto saved his shot — meant he had already entered the record books as the first player from the North to play for Liverpool since Sammy Smyth in 1954.
One suspects it won’t be the only record that Bradley will be setting in a career that has already taken him from Aghyaran to Anfield. From a Republic of Ireland perspective, it is just a shame he didn’t grow up a couple of miles further west.