With a pint in his hand Emmett Bradley sat in the Hogan Stand Bar in Moneyneena watching Kilcoo defeat Kilmacud Crokes in the 2022 All-Ireland Club Final.
Seeing the Magpies win the biggest prize in club football lit a spark within Watty Graham’s.
Just a few months before Jerome Johnston’s injury-time winner in Croke Park, Mickey Moran’s men were put to the pin of their collar by Glen in a tense, low-scoring Ulster semi-final encounter in the Athletic Grounds.
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The Down side needed extra-time to win that game too and, as Conor Laverty and Aidan Branagan lifted the Andy Merrigan Cup last February, the men from Maghera knew they weren’t far off the mark.
Now, some 11 months on, Emmett Bradley and his colleagues will emerge from beneath the Hogan Stand at Croke Park on Sunday as they face Kilmacud on All-Ireland Club final day.
“I was in a wee bar up in Moneyneena, The Hogan Stand, watching Kilmacud and Kilcoo - obviously Kilmacud got off to a flyer and we couldn’t believe the resilience that Kilcoo showed,” said Bradley.
“Kilcoo are that type of team, they’re never beat, we saw that a couple of weeks ago. It’s an example of quality that Kilmacud have.
“Thankfully I’ll be watching it from a different location this time around!
“It’s a very ambitious group, the boys don’t want to settle for just winning a Derry championship.
"We want to see if we can reach our potential, we know our potential is beyond a Derry Championship and thankfully we were able to rectify the wrongs against Kilcoo from last year.
“We probably felt last year we didn’t go for the game, and the way it panned out this year we just said if we’re going to be beat, fair play to them, but we’re certainly going to have a swing at it.
“It’s going to have to be a similar story coming into this Kilmacud game. Certainly it lights a fire for you, you know you’re never too far away and that’s a great thing to whet the appetite.”
Glen’s journey to the All-Ireland final has been built on the foundations of a decade of underage success
Emmet Bradley was Man-of-the-Match in the 2011 Ulster Minor Football Tournament final at St Paul’s as Glen defeated Armagh Harps.
They’d go on to win four-in-a-row at St Paul’s while the bulk of the team remained in place as they then annexed a hat-trick of U21 titles at the Creggan tournament between 2015 and 2017.
They had to wait a few more years before making the breakthrough at senior level as they toppled Slaughtneil to clinch the John McLaughlin Cup in 2021 - a feat they repeated in this season’s Derry SFC final.
“To get to this sort of level and build a culture like that, it doesn’t just happen overnight,” said Bradley.
“We’ve seen a lot of clubs in the past who take a similar sort of timeframe to translate to senior level, it’s a totally different ball game and takes a lot of buy-in.
“Thankfully this group of players have bought into each other, we’ve improved as a group and we’re starting to get to a level where we can compete against the best teams in the country. Long may it continue because it’s where you want to be.
“It’s a testament to the work the group of lads have put in, not only the group of lads but the club.
“We want for nothing, there’s a fantastic committee there in place and everybody’s rowing in the right direction. It’s a fantastic environment to be involved in.
“It certainly hasn’t been easy to get here, there’s been a lot of huge battles to get to this stage and we’re really proud of that.”
Bradley also feels that Glen’s path to the All-Ireland final gives them every chance of upsetting the odds against the Dublin champions.
Not only did they defeat Slaughtneil for the second time in as many seasons, they also had to overcome Errigal Ciaran, Cargin and Kilcoo to clinch provincial honours before their semi-final win over Moycullen of Galway earlier this month.
“The only way you’re going to improve is playing against the top players and thankfully we had the opportunity to test ourselves against those top teams,” added the Derry midfielder.
“Your progression is all about the environment you’re surrounded with and if we’re surrounded by top quality teams – Errigal, Cargin, Kilcoo – you’re not going to get tougher tests anywhere in the country.
“We also know that we have huge areas of improvement going into the Kilmacud game because we know the sort of county quality they possess.
“They’ve been around the block, have a huge tradition, so much like the Kilcoo game we know we’re going to have to really raise it. We’re looking forward to it.”
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