THE MOST DESPAIRING part of the Republic of Ireland’s years-long struggle is the proximity of the alternate vision.
Ireland, France, Portugal, and Brazil are the only countries on Earth whose underage international sides have produced two footballers to go on to be sold for at least €100 million each, but Ireland stand alone in seeing those players go on to play for someone else.
Jude Bellingham was a recent addition to that €100m bracket and another who wore an Ireland jersey as a child, albeit he was never going to escape England’s attentions.
To Rice, Grealish and Bellingham we can now add Conor Bradley, the Tyrone Gael now blowing minds at Liverpool. Off the back of his recent goal-and-two-assists performance against Chelsea, Irish fan group You Boys in Green excavated a picture of a young Bradley wearing a Republic of Ireland jersey.
😭😭 https://t.co/mhnzPYLuf5 pic.twitter.com/mNUiX14XFM
— YBIG (@YouBoysInGreen) February 1, 2024
The FAI did attempt to get Bradley on board but when they made their move, they found that the IFA, led by senior international manager Michael O’Neill, were much too far ahead.
“Our interest was there,” said Ireland U21 manager Jim Crawford when asked about Bradley in 2021. “We were talking to third parties about him and then all of a sudden he gets called up to the North’s senior team and played.”
Bradley slipped through the FAI’s net. Internal questions have been asked as to how Bradley was missed at U15 and U16 international level, although there’s an acknowledgement the larger player pool at that age-group makes scouting more difficult. Players can also swap freely between international sides at that level, but require an international transfer to play competitive games from U17 level onwards.
And whereas the likes of James McClean and Mark Sykes contacted the FAI to express their wish to play for them, no such contact was ever made by Bradley.
The FAI became aware of Bradley when he moved to Liverpool at the age of 16, and when they first reached out via figures at the club, they found that Bradley had been ensconced in the IFA’s elite player development programme, the key factor in his sticking with Northern Ireland.
Bradley is a product of the IFA’s ‘Club NI’ programme, a national academy system that was first established in 2014, with Jim Magilton centrally involved. The most talented players across Northern Ireland, ranging from U12 to U16, were invited to train three times a week at centres in Belfast and Cookstown and play representative games overseas.
The ambition was to pit the best against the best to raise everyone’s standards, while ensuring players were getting around 13 hours contact time each week, necessary to make up a wide deficit in comparison to English academies. With the secret out locally about Bradley’s talent, he went straight into the system at U12 level.
Declan Devine, now manager of Bohemians, was one of the coaches on the programme and worked with Bradley for four years, until he left for Liverpool on a full-time basis.
“We took a group to Qatar on a 10-day camp”, he tells The 42. ”Conor came as part of that group. Most people struggled with the heat and the conditions, but Conor, as expected, was able to go through the whole lot. He was a shining light. You could see from the age of 12 that his aerobic capacity, energy, and his quality were of a very high level. You could see the talent and the focus and the desire of a 12- or 13-year-old kid who wanted to give everything of himself.”
Devine’s first memory of Bradley is of a “tiny young kid coming from Castlederg who never said much”, but that didn’t get in the way of improving.
“Whenever you made a point to him”, says Devine, “He would ask, ‘Why?’ ‘Why do I need to be here?’ ‘How does that work?’ He was a quiet, shy lad but he would still ask questions.”
Nowadays, it takes more than a village to raise an elite footballer. Through the Club NI programme, the IFA worked with Bradley and his family to map out his development. This became a tripartite operation when Liverpool came on the scene.
It was decided Bradley should continue to play Gaelic football, for instance, and that he should take on one-on-one football coaching with Gerard Boyle in addition to playing with Dungannon Swifts. Devine estimates Bradley was working at least six days a week on his technique and his fitness. When Liverpool made their move for Bradley, they became part of this process, meeting regularly with the IFA and Bradley’s family on how best to continue his development before moving to the club’s academy full-time.
“Nothing was left to chance”, says Devine, “and it was driven by his family more than anyone.
We first spoke with Devine prior to the sad passing of Bradley’s father Joe, who died last week at the age of 58. When we spoke again with Devine after the sad news emerged, he expressed his condolences and sent his best wishes to Conor and the rest of the family.
“Nobody should take credit [for his development] other than Conor or his family,” says Devine. “They were strategic in what they wanted for his career, and that was the highlight for me, the realisation the amount of work that had to be done to achieve what he is doing at the moment. His family were very hands on, very calm, and very controlled. There was no real hype allowed around Conor.
“The time, care, love and effort [they put] into the development phase of Conor’s career, and zero pressure put on him from anyone. This is just my opinion, but he was allowed to grow into the young man and player he has become. He is a lovely person. He has no ego, never had one. He was probably the best player by a mile [growing up] but you’d never know it by talking to him. He was such a quiet and unassuming lad, he just wanted to give everything of himself.”
Bradley played as a left-sided attacker in his youth teams, but it was calculated at one of these meetings that his career would be best served by playing elsewhere.
“We felt right-back would be a position which Conor could go into and have a really good career, and to be fair to Liverpool, they were on the same page”, says Devine. “There was a lot of strategic thought put into Conor from the club, the association, the family and the boy himself.
“At outside left, he couldn’t have been any further from being a right-back! But that’s his ability to adapt: he could play anywhere on the pitch.”
Northern Ireland also promoted Bradley through their age-grades ahead of schedule, confident he could handle himself given he was player of the tournament at the 2017 SuperCupNI (formerly Milk Cup) at the age of 14, playing against opponents who were two years older than him. He played for the Northern Ireland U16s at the age of 15; for the U17s at the age of 16. Bradley then made his senior international debut at the age of 17, four months before he made his competitive first-team debut for Liverpool.
It was in November that year that Irish U21s manager Jim Crawford was asked about Bradley, but by that point it was already too late for the FAI.
Other graduates from the Club NI programme include Ross McCausland (Rangers), Dale Taylor (Nottingham Forest), and Michael Forbes (West Ham), and all have been capped at senior level by Northern Ireland before they turned 21. Another 2003-born talent, Aaron Donnelly – who is also at Nottingham Forest and played with Bradley at Dungannon – was called up to the senior international squad last June, although has yet to make his debut.
Stephen Kenny did admirable work in blooding young players during his time as senior manager, while the upcoming Nations League games with England will be another couple of painful reminders of the cost to Martin O’Neill’s decision not to cap Rice or Grealish. Involving teenage prospects must remain on the job description for whoever is next into the top job.
