Paddy Bradley has great respect for two modern day players, David Clifford and Shane Walsh.

He reckons they are the two best players in the modern game, and the reason why they are the best is because they can take on men in one-on one-situations.

“The two top players in the country are Clifford and Walsh, and what are they good at? They are good at getting the ball, putting the head down and taking the man on.”

Bradley prides himself on being a player who could take men on.

He feels it’s a skill that has been lost.

“Now you have a situation in football where too many times a forward will get a ball and their first instinct is to lay it off or to pass it back, or go on the loop.”

Bradley’s career has been defined by how he took on men.

The skill was first taught to him by his father Liam, the Baker as he is well known.

The audaciousness of his play earned Bradley his place on his club’s senior team at the age of 15.

His talent at beating defenders was honed in St Pat’s Maghera under the guidance of Dermot McNicholl, Adrian McGuckin and Paul Hughes.

The raw talent was spotted early by the legendary manager Eamonn Coleman who ‘got him early’ and forced the Glenullin star to focus his energies.

Taking on men did not only happen on the field either. Bradley also met challenges head-on off the field. He was a vocal critic of the county board as his career progressed and he even clashed with managers towards the end of his career.

His talent earned him a club championship in 2007, and a county All-star in the same year.

He has National league medals from 2000 and 2008.

Yet his career was cut short when he was never asked back to the county after suffering a second cruciate injury in 2012.

It feels though that it was his father Liam who had the greatest influence on Bradley.

“My biggest memory from [my childhood] was driving over the road with the auld boy, listening to the Irish Brigade, the Wolfe Tones, the Fureys, heading up to Glenullin, to either under 8, 10 or 12 training, or maybe up to his training. That would be four or five nights a week. We would have been chatting about football and winning championships.

“That’s all we talked about. He had won a championship in 1985. All he ever talked about was myself and Eoin winning championships.”

Liam Bradley would be Paddy’s coach from underage right through to senior football. Liam and Basil Rafferty, another Glenullin legend, realised they had a very talented group of players, and they wanted to get the very best out of them.

Paddy who is a teacher now, understands that this is not best practice in coaching.

But he relished the coaching.

“You talk about good cop, bad cop. But with them it was bad cop, bad cop. They were great for encouraging you, but if you did something wrong they weren’t long in telling you what you did wrong.”

What was right, was attacking football. Playing the game the right way meant fast, front-foot football.

“One thing that I always remember is how the coached direct football.

“I would have been criticised in my career for being too greedy but that came from being coached that way, that when you get yourself in a one one situation you take on your man, you have to put him under pressure.”

So, from when he was very young, Bradley was told that when presented with a problem he should put the head down and take it on.

And in those early days, the problem was that Glenullin weren’t as good as their coaches were telling them.

He recalls the day when Glenullin played an u-14 semi-final against Ballinderry and were beat off the park, Bradley only remembers the team scoring a couple of points, and his brother Eoin was doing nets that day.

Rafferty and Liam Bradley would not hear of any negativity though.

“All they had in their heads was Glenullin winning things.

“There was just constant coaching from Daddy and other coaches in the club. They just drove it into us that we had to get better. That’s just the way it was, it was a one-track mind. For the hour and a half of training they were training us to win championships.”

And it was in these early years that Bradley learnt one of his important lessons, that self belief, hard work and hitting the challenge head on would yield results.

“That same team four years later beat Ballinderry in the quarter-final of the minor championship. That just shows you the progress that was made in four years.

“I know they didn’t take it too well.

“You have been working towards beating one of the big teams, you have been told that you are going to do it, then when you do beat one of those teams then you realise you can achieve.”

It was at the same time that Paddy learnt another lesson, this time it was more about himself, and how he would deal with personal challenges.

He went to St Patrick’s College Maghera during the 1990s.

“I was playing north Derry football, I was always playing two or three years above my age group. I was playing minor from 14. North Derry wasn’t as strong as south Derry. I was always a big fish in a small pond. I was scoring regularly for the club. But when I went to St Pat’s I found it difficult.

“I went from being the one who was used to being the first on the team sheet, and putting the ball over the bar, to the person who was struggling to even get on the team. I found that very difficult and very challenging.”

Here was another challenge, the metaphorical man to take on. He could drop the ball or he could put his head down and go at it.

He chose the latter.

“Maghera helped me greatly. Working with Adrian was fantastic, and Dermot McNicholl.

“Their man management and belief in me was important. You ask about what makes managers good, and a lot of it has to do with man management. It’s how you get on with players and how you talk to players. You can have all the systems you want, but you have got to have players playing for you.”

He also learnt a lot about hard work and setting goals in Maghera.

“So many boys are out playing football and they take it or leave it. They don’t understand what it is to really want to win something, and they don’t know what it means to train really hard to achieve that. That was never the case in Maghera. You learnt very quickly that you did nothing without hard work. That was the big compliment I had for that school. Everything you achieved you had to work hard for it.

“They were great days and I really enjoyed playing football at the school. There was a lot of hard training, some of the hardest training that I have ever done. It was old-school, tough stuff but it was character building.”

In Maghera, the teams that Bradley played on won everything except what he regarded as the most important trophy, the MacRory Cup.

In 1998 they lost to St Colman’s in the final. The following year, Bradley lost to the same school in the quarter-final.

“It was one of the hardest defeats that I had ever had. The way Maghera is, your whole seven years is built towards winning the MacRory. They make it seem like the be-all and end-all. That’s what made not having won a MacRory Cup medal so gut-wrenching. I was injured in the quarter-final.

“It was played in Corrigan Park and I was taken off. I was took out in a harsh challenge in the first half.

“They brought me on in the last five minutes to try and get us over the line. It didn’t come to pass, St Colman’s beat us by a point.

“I was captain of the team that year, and I remember thinking that, in terms of football, that’s the end of it all. I hadn’t won a MacRory. That’s the way it was at Maghera, it was MacRory or nothing. It was gut wrenching, but I learnt a lot from it.”

Bradley understood at that stage, that MacRory Cup football was a stepping stone for players to make their mark at the county level. And while he was part of the county minor set up, the defeat could have had a negative effect upon his career.

“You knew if you weren’t performing well for St Pat’s in the MacRory Cup you weren’t going to be picked for Derry minors. And if you weren’t playing for Derry minors then there was very little chance that you were going to play for Derry seniors. In those early days you knew the pathway was there, and you knew you had to perform.

“It is maybe a criticism that after St Pat’s there are young lads who walk onto the Derry senior team and the lads who are there have to move out. But that’s not the fault of the young lads who were playing well for St Pat’s. They are performing at a high level.”

But his county career was certainly not over.

Bradley, thanks to his experiences up to that point, and the support from his father, knew that he was good enough.

“My dad was always the man that was telling me that I was good enough. I was never lacking in confidence. I always felt that I was good enough after having a couple of good years at MacRory, and Derry minors. At that stage I was playing seniors for Glenullin. I played my first game for seniors when I was 15. At 16 I was playing centre half forward for my club. I remember scoring ten points in a senior championship match against Craigbane. I felt that I was good enough to play. He was always backing me up.”

He had caught the eye of the great Eamonn Coleman at that stage, and the Derry legend would have the Glenullin star in his changing room for the 1999/2000 league campaign.

This was the third great test of Bradley’s character, and perhaps one of the most defining.

His first two games for Derry saw him being marked by two All-stars in Kildare’s Brian Lacey and Mayo’s Kenneth Mortimer.

“I thought I did fairly well. But Eamonn was pretty sore on me, extremely sore. I can remember Eamonn Coleman giving me serious ballsings, and bollockings in my first year in front of a full changing room of people, Henry Downey and the like.

“Them boys were sitting there and Eamonn was spending two or three minutes shouting at me, about my attitude, and what I was doing wrong. I was ready for walking away. You are saying to yourself ‘I don’t need this shit’.”

Fortunately, there were elements in the changing room who were there to help Bradley make the right decisions.

“I can remember the likes of Paul McFlynn and Johnny McBride, and Sean Marty (Lockhart) saying to me, ‘don’t worry about it, he’s only doing that to bring out the best in you’.

“I can remember sitting in the Greenvale and he gave me a real going over before the match. This was in front of the team. Then he asked me to stay back. Paul McFlynn said to me ‘Don’t worry Brads, he’ll apologise to you now’. But he actually kept me back and gave me twice as bad.”

This was the real test of his character. Would he quit, no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to get on the right side of this Derry legend.

This was a man that he couldn’t put on the back foot, but Bradley wasn’t going to stop trying.

“I stuck around because I wanted to prove him wrong.”

Derry qualified for the league final after beating Roscommon, and they headed out to take on Meath, a game that ended all square, 1-12 apiece. It was that game that forced Bradley the teenager to take on the most famous manager Derry had ever had.

“That same year in 2000 he was very sore on me. In the drawn game he brought on five subs, five forwards and I wasn’t one of them.

“The Monday after I was going to leave. I felt like I was missing club football, I wasn’t convincing him. I remember having a conversation with Da and he told me to ring him.

“I remember this as if it was yesterday. I remember going up to my mum and dad’s bedroom. We had the phone in the hall and the portable phone. I didn’t want to do it in the hall as they would have been listening in. So I rang him from the bed room

“I said: ‘Eamonn, Paddy Bradley here. I have a question. Why am I not starting?’.

“Then he said: ‘Are you questioning my decision?’.”

“I said: ‘You are playing this man, that man, I am better than him’.

“He said: ‘You think you are better than this?’.

“He drew this out of me, he made me say ‘I am the best forward in Derry’.

“This is an 18 year old telling a man who won an All-Ireland.

“Then he said: ‘Paddy, you’ll get your chance’. That was it.”

Bradley hung up the phone, not knowing what would happen.

That was the first week of May.

Derry were due to play Cavan in the first round of the championship a week later. When the team was announced there was a surprise.

“I was named at corner forward.

“Out of the blue. No one saw it coming. I wasn’t playing particularly well in training. He just threw me in. I scored four points from play in the first half. I came off with shin splints at half time. I was crying. I remember him patting me on the back and saying ‘I knew it was in there’.

“The week later we played Meath in the final replay and we won the National League.”

It was the start of Paddy Bradley’s career as a senior county footballer. And further proof to him that if he were to believe in himself and take chances, he’d get what he wanted.

“That was the mark of the man. He pulled it out of me.

“Through his man-management he drew the performance out of me.

“It wasn’t till years later in The Game paper, he had a piece on the back page. He dedicated a full column to me on one occasion. He wrote about why he was sore on me. His reasoning was that he could see my potential so many years before I even came on the scene. He knew I was one of those players that if he didn’t get me early doors, he would lose me.

“His thinking was that too many young players come into the county set up with plenty of potential, they believe the hype in themselves, and they don’t maybe do the hard work. He needed to focus my mind on hard work. He maybe needed me to look at my performances and to see what was going on. He knew that I could be the go-to forward in Derry. I remember he told me that five years after he stopped being Derry manager. I have great respect for me. He had a serious way with him. He was the sort of boy who could shout at you for five minutes in the changing room and then sit down with you on the bus on the way home and have a yarn with you.”

So from that point on, knowing that he had the support of his manager, and that he could compete at the top level, Bradley was fearless, though perhaps not always successful.

“I remember playing Antrim in 2000, and kicking over a sideline, and then missing a 25 yard free in front of the posts. I was so inconsistent. It was immature I suppose.

“I remember the replay when I scored one of the quickest goals I ever scored.

“Anthony kicked the ball in, Enda went up for it, knocked it down and I put it in the back of the net.

“I got into the Ulster final that year. I was 18, I thought I had made it.”

It took Derry two games to beat Antrim, but they were in a final against Armagh who were the defending champions.

“In the Ulster final Ger Reid was marking me. The two McNulty’s were playing, Justin was marking me and Enda was playing as a sweeper. I barely touched leather. That brought me back to earth. Any thoughts that I had made it went out the window.”

Yet Bradley was optimistic about his future.

“I remember thinking at that time that there would be plenty more Ulster finals to come. I was playing with a Derry team that had been in plenty of Ulster finals. I thought it was no big deal. But the problem was I never got there again. That’s one of the biggest regrets of my career.

“It’s scary to think of the players that I played with that didn’t get to an Ulster final. It’s unbelieveable. It wasn’t that the players weren’t used to winning. They were winning Ulster clubs.”

Bradley was in university at the time so it is understandable that he was confident. He would go on to win a Sigerson in 2001. That created even more confidence in his ability.

“The fact that I was playing full forward with Jim McGuinness who was playing for Donegal, that told me that I was good enough. I marked Paul Griffin (he was playing for UCD) in the Sigerson final, he was corner back for Dublin, and scored four points. I was only a second year and able to score that off one of Dublin’s best markers there was no telling what I could do on the national stage.”

2001 was another big year for Derry. After Derry beat Antrim in Ulster they lost to Tyrone and headed for the qualifiers.

Another win against Antrim, then victory over Laois, and then a win over Cavan earned Derry a place in the quarter-finals, and a game against Tyrone.

“One of the biggest things about that game against Tyrone, was that there was a video clip of McFlynn coming out with the ball in the Ulster quarter-final and Peter Canavan shouldering him right up the middle. The referee didn’t give the free.

“The whole focus of that game was that video. How there was nothing but intent and viciousness. I remember the management team zooming in on that. We watched that in the hotel. The message was this is how much they hate you.

“Eamonn had a lot of respect for Tyrone, but they were the team that he wanted to beat. I Remember the build up to the match.

“It was the first year of the back door and Tyrone were nearly complaining that they had to play Derry again because they had already played us. They themselves were doubting that they were going to beat us. That was a great victory. But the Derry Tyrone games back then were something else. The atmosphere was unbelievable. Even tapping over a free kick you were getting so much abuse.

“There have been a lot of important rivalries since, but back then there was only one show in town, Derry v Tyrone.”

The win over Tyrone led to an All-Ireland semi-final against Galway.

“That was the year that Matthew Clancy scored a screamer of a goal. We were leading by three or four with eight or nine minutes to go.

“Eamonn said that he always said that teams like Meath and Galway were hard to beat. We thought that we could beat them. And we probably should have beat them.

“We missed a few chances. There were wee small things that went against us. Instead of three or four up, we should have been five or six up.”

Confidence was high in those years.

“But there wasn’t a year that I didn’t play for Derry that we didn’t think we were going to win an Ulster or All-Ireland. Regardless of how many times we fell short, we still believed we were good enough because we had the players.”

The next big run came in 2004, when Derry reached the All-Ireland semi-finals, under guidance from Mickey Moran and John Morrison.

“I remember going down to playing Wicklow or Longford I remember the boys asking if we could get a few beer. I remember going to ask Mickey and thinking there was no chance, but he said no bother.

“I remember the boys getting off the bus at the Glenavon and all going out together, Niall McCusker, big Enda, there was about 20 of us. There was a great team, great camaraderie. After every game we had a few pints. We played Westmeath. They had won the Leinster Championship for the first time in a while. I remember having a good game, I scored the best goal that I ever had. Then there was the All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry. We came up a bit short.”

The Tyrone rivalry would continue two years later, in that famous game in Healy Park in 2006. The game when Derry held the All-Ireland champions scoreless in the first half.

“Paddy Crozier was manager and he brought Eamonn in to give a speech. Paddy and Eamonn were close friends as Ballymaguigan men.

“Eamonn gave one of his rousing speeches, I had heard it before but it was a new team in ’06, a lot of ones had broke on to the team, and older ones had moved on.

“The speech he gave, you were ready to rip the shirt off your back. We proved that we were capable of beating anyone, but we weren’t able to repeat it in a semi-final.”

But it was 2007 that would be the pinnacle of Bradley’s playing career. Gone was the immature player of days gone by. He was an established county star, and ready to make his mark.

Unfortunately things didn’t go to plan.

“In 2007, I got a bit of bother with a referee.

“In a league game Barry Cassidy got a score wrong. We beat the Loup by two points but he said it was a draw. I grabbed him by the back to show him the score board. He was having none of it. I was then faced with a three-month ban for physical interference with a referee. I was facing missing all football.

“In hindsight I shouldn’t have put my hands on him, but there was no intention to strike. There were verbals that maybe made things worse. It is not something that should have happened, it is not something I am proud of.

“It was all quashed in the end up. It went all the way to the DRA, I used Feargal Logan the Tyrone solictor. I remember coming on against Antrim in the Championship that year, I didn’t start that day as I had a quad injury. I remember being booed by the Antrim support and some of the Derry support. The story had been in and out of the papers and a lot of the support thought I had no right to be playing, as I had laid hands on referee.”

Derry lost to Monaghan in the Ulster semi-final, 0-14 to 1-9, Bradley scored 1-2.

Then they headed for the back door again. Wins against Armagh, Mayo and Laois ended up in Derry playing Dublin in the All-Ireland quarter-final. But it was defeat again, as the Leafers were outplayed.

The run was enough to earn Bradley an All-star award, though he almost didn’t receive it.

“It was my fifth time being nominated for an All star. I got a phone call from a member of the selection committee on the Friday. He’d heard that I wasn’t going down, and I wasn’t. I’d been going down for four years previous.

“I am not saying that I should have got four All-Stars but I thought I might have got one before that. “In 2007 I decided that Glenullin were in a championship final, and I just thought there was no reason going down there.

“The man didn’t tell me that I was going to get it, he just advised me very strongly to make sure I was in Dublin that night. I had to go and find a Tuxedo last minute.com because I hadn’t been for going.

“It was great to go down and get it. Those All star nights are great craic.”

It was extra special too because his good friend Kevin McCloy picked up an award on the same night.

“It was great that Kevin got it as well. Of all the boys I played with Kevin was my best friend. He was at my wedding. He’s had his troubles, what happened him at Owenbeg (McCloy collapsed with a heart condition). But to win an All-Star and to have your close team mate with you, that made it special.

“Just like travelling with my dad to training, me and Kevin would have did a lot of travelling together to training. Over the back road from Kilrea to Lavey isn’t that far. We would have spent a lot of time in each other’s company in those ten years. A lot of that time would have been chatting about team selection, who was playing well, what we were doing right, what we were doing wrong. Winning an All-star with him was special.”

The All-star night was not a wild night though as Glenullin were due to play the championship replay the following weekend.

That year they had went on an incredible run in the championship.

“We had won the semi-final against Ballinderry and I kicked ten points. Beating Ballinderry was massive. To finally do it was so important. We had talked about it for so long. I was nearly unmarkable.”

The win over Ballinderry reminded that team of their minor win back in the late 90s, and that this was a Glenullin team that perhaps had a destiny to win the championship.

But they had to beat Damian Cassidy’s Bellaghy in the final.

“Michael McGoldrick was marking me. Damian Cassidy was a shrewd manager and he played Cookie Scullion in front of me.

“He had watched DVDs of how we played. Damian told me years later that this is what he had did. He knew the runs that I made. So I had a poor first match. The second match we should have beat Bellaghy out the gate. But we struggled to get over the line.

“First match Bellaghy had a score to beat us but they missed it.

“Michael McGoldrick marked me very well.

“Myself and Damian hadn’t the best of relationships when he was manager.

“I remember one night when we were staying in a hotel preparing for the National League. We were sitting round and he said he had more or less kept me scoreless over two games in the county final. But I was fit to boast that I had kicked the winner. That was my memory, of kicking the winner.”

So despite not having had a good game, the most important thing was that they had won, and his father’s prediction that his sons would win a championship came true.

“I can remember the jubilation at the end. I remember going looking for Daddy and Eoin. It was years of preparation. It was near your whole football career was geared towards that.

“There was so much around the club about the previous championship winners, so much talked about it, that to finally emulate them was special.

“We had trained so hard for two or three years before it.

“I thought that that team in my eyes played far better football than any other team. We weren’t able to win more and that was hard to take. It’s unbelieveable that that team didn’t win more.”

The following year Glenullin did not win the championship, nor did Derry win the Ulster title that they had hoped for.

They did beat Kerry in the National League final.

“We thought we were going to win more in 2008, but we sort of flattered to deceive.

“It was good to win a national league title but it wasn’t the one we were after.”

Paddy Crozier departed as manager in 2008, and Damian Cassidy came on board for the 2009 campaign.

It was at this stage that Bradley’s issues with county management started to creep into the public consciousness.

He had went to Australia as part of the Ireland team, and was planning to stay on.

“I was looking forward to Damian coming in because he was assistant to Eamonn. He had great success with Bellaghy, and was a proven manager.

“I remember when he got the job he called me in Australia and I wasn’t due back to February or March. I came back early in January because I was keen to get back started.

“But there were just different issues over the two year period. The first year it wasn’t too bad, there were different issues but we got over it. But the second ear I was dropped for a qualifier game against Carlow. He will say he made the right call, I will defend my stance on it. The call wasn’t based on football, he was trying to make a show out of me because I was an experienced player. I didn’t think that was the right thing to do so I walked away. Was it the right thing to do at the time? Who knows. It was hard having spent that ten years giving your life to Derry, from playing derry minors in 1998 to playing for the seniors up 2008.”

Bradley was keen to defend his choice. He’s aware of the perception he has in his own county.

“I think people think of you as a primadonna. There was a lot more thought that went into it than people think. It was a hard decision.

“I had a lump in my back of my throat watching Derry.”

His county career wasn’t over though, as John Brennan took the team in 2011.

The Lavey man’s style of management sat well with Bradley.

“He was like Eamonn, a straight talker. He was up front. If he felt something, he would tell you, and I liked that. I don’t like people going behind people’s backs. We got on well and he made me captain.”

Disaster struck though when Bradley did his cruciate ligament.

He knows why it happened.

“That was at a stage where training was going to a whole new level. You had social media and you could see that boys were training morning and night. I could see what boys were doing down south and I was doing that too. In hindsight I was putting the body under too much pressure. I was maybe training three or four times a week. I was striving for excellence. Something had to give. I put that down to what happened to my cruciate. I was flying, but I was doing too much.”

The cruel twist of fate was that that season 2011, saw Derry return to the Ulster final for the first time since 2000.

“I was lucky that I knew for a long time that I wasn’t going to feature (in the Ulster final). It as more frustrating for Eoin (his brother). He had only done his the week previous. Having spent so many years trying to get back to an Ulster final it was frustrating of course.”

The absence of the two Bradleys for that Ulster final was remarkable. They had been such regular scorers for the county, to lose them both for the final was such bad luck.

Bradley explained that not everyone would have felt that way.

“For so many years in the lead up, there were so many people that thought that Derry were better off without the two Bradleys.

“I used to hear that Derry would win nothing until the two Bradleys weren’t there. Then along comes an Ulster final, and the two of us weren’t playing and we came up short. Even when I retired, and Eoin went to soccer, then people thought Derry was going places.

“You hear them things. But was Derry a better team when the two of us were there, of course we were, would we have given Donegal a better game that day if we had been there? Of course we would. Would we have won? Who knows. But Donegal had less to deal with without us two there.”

The Bradley brothers were stars for the county, but Paddy feels that perhaps his brother was not allowed to achieve his potential.

“Eoin was in and out of the panel with different managers. They questioned his commitment. Managers would say that I was the more consistent and ommitted. But he had flashes of brilliance.

“Him and Paddy Crozier would have fallen out. I enjoyed playing with him as he was a player capable of brilliance. I do think he should still be playing with Derry. If Rory Gallagher wanted to win an Ulster championship should he be going looking Eoin Bradley? He should be because there is not another forward capable of brilliance out of nothing. He maybe wasn’t managed correctly. Everyone needs to be managed brilliant, Sometimes erratic players need that extra bit of management.”

Bradley’s career would come to end under the guidance of the next Derry manager, Brian McIver.

“I didn’t pull the pin, Brian McIver pulled the pin for me. It is still something that doesn’t sit easy with me. I done my second cruciate in Glenullin when we were playing Creggan. It was really disappointing because I was going so well.

“I got a phone call from Brian the next day, he said he had heard that I had done my cruciate. At that stage I was Derry captain. He said that he was disappointed and that he would be in touch. This was September. I went and got my operation. At the time, Anne Boylan from Glenullin was the Derry physio, she was updating him on my progress. As far as I was concerned that by the spring of next year I was fit to get back to training. But I never got the call. That was very disappointing.”

And that was it, he didn’t know it but his last year with Derry was 2012.

Perhaps the frustrating thing for Bradley was that he never got a chance to prove himself, to beat the man, nor did he get an explanation.

“I do believe that there was more to it than football. I feel there were others who influenced Brian’s decision. They had maybe seen that it was my second cruciate, and they felt that I wasn’t good enough. I also felt that there were those around the county board who felt that I was too vocal around the changing room. They thought maybe they could move on without me.”

Bradley returned to his club and tried to make a point.

“It made me want to prove that I was the best at club level, to prove that they were wrong. And for two years I was flying at club level, and still top scorer. But the call never came. You hoped that it would. It was Brian first of all, and then Damian Barton after that. You have to respect their decision, but it was disappointing that my career ended the way that it did. I felt that I had more to give. Having played for ten or 11 years I deserved a reason why I wasn’t asked back.

“It’s a managers right to pick whoever they want, but when you play for ten or 11 years and you captain a team. I think you deserve a call.”

He said it himself. He started his career being told that he would win championships, that he was the best player on the team.

That he had to go out and try to beat the man whether that was on the field or off it.

The opportunity has gone now, and eight years since his last game, he still feels frustrated.

But he’s moved on and is now a manager. He manages the Loup in Derry, and his doing his best to encourage his players to be the best and, of course, take on their man.