Emmett Bradley of Derry poses for a portrait with the Sam Maguire Cup during the launch of the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship National 2024 at Lough Beg in Derry. Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
By John Harrington
After successive defeats to Donegal, Galway, and Armagh, Derry grabbed a championship lifeline last weekend by defeating Westmeath to secure their place in the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-finals.
The fact they didn’t concede any goals after conceding nine in those three previous matches was another positive, but their level of performance was still some way off what they produced last April when beating Dublin in the League Final.
Derry’s decline since that match has been the biggest mystery of this year’s championship, and even their own players are struggling to find answers.
What Emmett Bradley does know for sure though is that they’ll have to play much better against Mayo in Saturday’s preliminary quarter-final than they did against Westmeath if they want to go any further in this championship.
“It’s difficult to put a finger on it,” says Bradley of Derry’s sudden loss of form. “There has been a dip in performance. Absolutely. It’s clear for ourselves to see as much as anybody.
“For us our energy is fully focused on trying to rectify that and trying to swing the momentum in our favour and generate a bit of momentum this weekend.
“There was a bit of improvement at the weekend, albeit that it wasn’t a performance that we were overly happy with against Westmeath. We knew it was going to be a tricky fixture for us given what had gone on.
“There's no doubt about it, if we're performing like that against Mayo this weekend then we'll do incredibly well to get a result there.
“It's something we'll need to target because the level that Mayo are operating at currently is a really high level. They would argue they should be having a weekend off this weekend based on their performance last week.
“They play a really high energy game and it's important for us to do our bit to compete with that and to quell that.”
Emmett Bradley of Derry in action against Sam McCartan of Westmeath during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Round 3 match between Derry and Westmeath at Páirc Esler in Newry, Down. Photo by Sam Barnes/Sportsfile.
They eye-test would tell you that Derry simply aren’t playing with the same sort of physical intensity that was so evident during their successful League campaign.
Is it simply a case that they peaked a little too early in the season?
“I suppose the dip in performance would suggest that but I know from my own experience that there's certain games where it might look that way based on the momentum of the game,” says Bradley.
“You take the Donegal game for example, the nature of the goals that went in, and just the way the game plays out it can make it look like a team is very off the boil in some way.
“That's very common and it's very difficult to see that if you're observing the game as opposed to actually being in the middle of it. A big thing for us obviously was the concession of goals. That's a huge area of the game and it swings the momentum in favour of the opposition and that's a very difficult tide to swim against in many ways.
“We'll never know what would have happened if we had been tighter at the back and closed up shop and kept them goals out, it might have been a very different story.
“It's very important for us to focus our energy on the future because we're hanging in there and we have an opportunity to rectify that and that's what we're focusing our energy on, tightening up at the back, much like any other team.
“The likes of the Dubs don't win these All-Irelands year after year without having a teak-tough defence. That's something we'll target moving forward as well as getting a flow back in attack as well.”
Derry haven’t looked like a confident team since that defensive meltdown against Donegal in the Ulster SFC quarter-final, but Bradley insists they still believe in themselves.
“Absolutely. The lads know that they're capable of reaching a really high level. A lot of lads in the dressing-room have played at an unbelievably high level for a long period of time so there's evidence it's there, of course.
“The important thing is to add to that evidence moving forward and no better opportunity than to do it against one of the top teams in the country in Mayo.
“I think if we're able to get back to that level and show the level of performance we have then that's a great opportunity to move on, but it won't be an easy task.”