Bradley plays down Derry player unrest rumours

Derry ace Emmett Bradley has dismissed speculation of unrest and unhappiness between the county’s senior footballers and manager Mickey Harte.

Derry’s form has dropped significantly since their Division 1 final triumph over Dublin at Croke Park in March and an Ulster quarter-final defeat to Donegal, followed by All-Ireland round robin losses to Galway and Armagh has seen the rumour mill kick into overdrive.

Harte’s side got back to winning ways at the weekend with a 2-07 to 0-09 victory over Westmeath, a result that earned the Ulster side an All-Ireland SFC preliminary quarter-final clash with Mayo.

Bradley’s 65th minute goal was the key score against Westmeath, helping to get them over the line and speaking to RTÉ Sport today, the Watty Graham’s man insists that the players remain very much behind their manager.

“There was none of that,” Bradley said when asked about the rumours of unrest.

“At the end of the day there are rumours and as we know people love to, whenever things like that come out, people love to jump on the back of them and, and sort of to fuel it and everything else.

“But no, there was none of that. We were fully focused on trying to rectify what went wrong in those games. As a playing group we definitely weren’t happy with it, given the standards that we had set previous to that.

“It’s very important for us to just assess that and try to put a plan in place to try improve and guard against it again.

“So that’s what we’ll be focusing on for Mayo particularly, If we’re not at our best, moving on against those lads, the level they’re operating at the minute then we’ll do well to get our results.

“We need to hopefully fix that in a short space of time, and hopefully we can, we can compete really well.”

Bradley believes that his side’s slump in form has been down to some lax defending, pointing towards the goals they’ve conceded.

He insists that they’ll have to tighten up at the back considerably if they’re to get anything from their clash with Mayo.

“It was well documented, I suppose, the concession of goals. Anybody that’s played sport knows how hard and how difficult that can be in terms of momentum to swing that back in your favour.

“Particularly the nature of the goals, and when you’re in the middle of that, that can be quite sapping

“So look it happened and that’s obviously a big area we’ll be focusing on, like any team. Any successful team’s going to be built on a strong defence, so that’s something that we’ll be really looking to rectify moving forward.

“It’s a massive challenge, it’s probably the toughest draw we could have got.

“We know the test that’s ahead of us and we’ll have to be at our best to get a result out of it.”

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