DERRY DYNAMO RELISHING HIS DUAL MANDATE
Eoin Bradley is proving to be a master of the arts
I do wonder should I have taken soccer more seriously at 16 or 17
EOIN Bradley still felt the frustration on when he arrived home to Glenullin in eight days ago. Earlier that afternoon, n, Coleraine had fallen to a 0-2 defeat to Portadown at a windswept Shamrock ck Park. It left the club dangling perililously close to the drop zone in the Danske ke Bank Premiership.
Bradley himself was reflecting on a couuple of missed chances. But within 24 hours rs the frustration had passed and his mind was as already focused on yesterday’s home game with Dungannon Swifts, which also ended in a 2-0 defeat. There was no drawn out postmortem.
When he’s asked to pinpoint the difference between playing Gaelic football for Derry and soccer for Coleraine, one word is frequently used: ‘The pressure is relentless if you are a county footballer now, especially on home life, because you are supposed to be training with the county team four or five times a week.
‘And, of course, there is the pressure to perform, and the pressure if you don’t perform. There’s none of that with Coleraine. There is pressure, from the manager and from yourself, but for three weeks before a championship game with Derry that is all you hear about. It’s all anybody will talk to you about.
‘And then, for about three weeks after the championship game, whether you win or lose, it is all anyone will talk about, analysing bits and pieces of it. It was like that when we lost to Cavan this year. There’s nothing like that with Coleraine and I am enjoying that change, to be honest.’
Bradley has found a sport where his streak of individualism is perhaps more appreciated than it ever was as a corner-forward in the suffocating surroundings of Ulster football. Since his surprise signing for Coleraine earlier this season, he has scored eight goals in nine games in Northern Ireland’s top flight, including a brace against Linfield, one goal being a spectacular overhead kick. Given he’s now 29, some have speculated about what would have happened if he had focused on soccer from a younger age.
‘I suppose when you score a few goals, you do start to think. Maybe I should have taken the sport a bit more seriously when I was 16 or 17. But I’ve played Gaelic football my whole life, it’s my game. And the fact that I’m an inter-county footballer has helped me with Coleraine because I am in good physical shape, have good upper-body strength. All that comes from Gaelic,’ says Bradley, who was approached by Ballymena United when he was a Derry minor.
‘It would have been nice to see where it went, especially as it’s going so well for me now. But I wouldn’t be as strong as I am now. As a county player, I’ve been doing weight programmes for the last decade, I am used to being double-marked on the field and having to stand up to all that physicality. That has all stood to me in soccer.’
WHETHER Bradley will even be an inter-county footballer in 2014 is uncertain. His contract with Coleraine takes him up to May, and Derry boss Brian McIver has already dismissed the notion of him playing soccer on a Saturday and Allianz League football for Derry on the Sunday.
‘I spoke to Brian a few weeks ago and opted out of the McKenna Cup squad anyway. The National League is still a few weeks away so I can speak to him about that again. I know we have Tyrone at home on the first Saturday night alright but, after that, most of Derry’s games are on the Sunday anyway, so hopefully we can reach some arrangement,’ the Glenullin club man explains.
‘Coleraine have been good enough to give me a contract until May and I want to honour it. In fairness to (Coleraine manager) Oran Kearney, when I started playing for them Glenullin were still in the Championship and I had a couple of games with them. And he understood that perfectly, said he knew that Gaelic was my first port of call. But we will have to wait and see what happens in the New Year.’
Bradley is preparing as if he will be back in the Oak Leaf fold come the spring, having already entered a training programme with his cousin Gerard O’Kane in the local gym. ‘I’m keeping in great shape, there is no problem with the knee for the last while and I feel that I can play for Derry for the next few years. I feel that I can do both, but the decision might not be up to me.’
He admits that he has surprised himself with how easily he has slotted into the Bannsiders’ team, even though they have lost the last six games in-a-row. For most of his twenties, soccer was simply a way to pass the time and maintain a level of fitness in the winter
‘It was a social thing more than anything else. A few games at the weekend, few pints with the lads after, that sort of thing,’ he admits. Still, he seems to have a flair for it, revelling in the freedom away from the cauldron that is Ulster football, where his status as one of Derry’s marquee forwards often led to him being double or triple-marked.
ACOUPLE of years ago, when Kilrea United won the Steele & Sons Cup final, a local junior soccer tournament in Derry, he scored a hat-trick in a 3-0 win over Riada FC. But Derry always took priority – as it would do in a GAA household. However, he’s received plenty of support from his father, Liam, and brother, Paddy, in his latest venture.
‘They have been coming to all the home games. Paddy even came down to Cliftonville for that game. It’s the highest standard of soccer that we have up here, so I think they’ve enjoyed it.’
At 32, Paddy has succumbed to the injuries that have built up over the past few years, but a very different challenge now awaits having joined his father’s backroom team for the coming season with Antrim. ‘They will both be a bit busy now, so I don’t know if they will be coming to many more matches.’
Bradley the younger, meanwhile, is relishing his time away from the sporting environment he has always known. If he does come back to Derry in the new year, it will be as a player with a different perspective than the one who walked off the field after the qualifier defeat to Cavan last summer.