Slaughtneil manager Paul Bradley laments loss of 'GAA's best competition'

Bradley has now tasted championship glory as both player and manager and he revealed he still harbours hopes of leading his club in the Ulster Club Championship against some of the top sides in the province.

“It is very frustrating because to me it is the best competition in the GAA,” explained the Slaughtneil manager, “I have said that before. I feel the provincial clubs is the best competition the GAA has and it is a crying shame they aren’t trying to pursue it in some form, shape or fashion at some point.

“I understand county has to come into the equation now but I don’t see why they couldn’t squeeze it in after Christmas. What would it take to run it? It would run in two months. We are in strange times but I think they could make space for it.

“There is some quality around Ulster and we wouldn’t be getting too far ahead of ourselves, that’s for sure. It would be one game at a time the way it has been all year. I’m sure we would be fairly confident within ourselves but we’ll not be standing now because we’ve won the Derry championship and saying we would do this or that in Ulster because we know how tough Ulster is.”

Slaughtneil fully justified their favourites tag throughout the championship and Bradley paid tribute to the discipline of his players during the early months of lockdown.

“It’s just the players. They find it from within themselves,” said Bradley of the drive that has been evident within his panel all season, “Possibly the break did us the world of good. Possibly they were tired the last year or two, they have been on the go nearly non-stop for six or seven years and that has to take its toll on them but they got a fairly good break.

“We stopped in March and they took three weeks or a month but, to be fair, they went right back at it individually. They put in a lot of running sessions, they obviously couldn’t do anything with the ball, but they kept the running going and they kept their gym going and I think we were in good shape for not having had collective training for what, 12 or 13 weeks.”

Against Magherafelt’s resolute defensive system, the game was never going to be a high scoring classic and Bradley said he was delighted to see scoring contribution from defenders.

“Our runners were coming from deep and that was causing them trouble. It was claustrophobic in there, the kick just wasn’t on so we had to be patient and we had to run it.

“As I said after the semi-final, we feel in the right moments we can run the ball. You have Brendan Rogers, Chrissy, they are natural footballers as defenders but it was always going to be low scoring, especially with the night it was last night and then the morning it was.”