Slaughtneil have a plan for Bradley

Se McGuigan will be a focial point of the Slaughtneil attack

SLAUGHTNEIL believe that they have a gameplan that can nullify the remarkable scoring threat of Killyclogher’s Mark Bradley in this weekend’s Ulster Senior Football Club Championship semi-final.

That’s not to say that they will be able to handle the rest of the Killyclogher forward line.

Bradley scored 0-6 in their first game against Coalisland, 0-8 in the replay, and 1-1 against Cargin in the Ulster Club quarter-final.

Slaughtneil assistant manager John Joe Kearney said of the Tyrone attacker, “I suppose it would be wrong to say that Mark Bradley is their main scorer, but he has put up a lot of scores for them. When you give him space he will score.”

Kearney was well aware of how Coalisland treated Bradley, switching different cornerbacks on to him. That plan didn’t work.

“What they didn’t do was cut out the space in front of him. No disrespect to him, he is a great forward, but all the ball that he was getting was played in to that space in front of him. When a player is getting that sort of delivery it makes him very hard to mark. We will see about how we can go about cutting that down.”

In order to cut that down they will have to control the ball at midfield. Patsy Bradley is the man to do that along with Padraig Cassidy. Chrissy McKaigue will also be there at half back, sweeping up any loose ball.

But McKaigue also represents a major threat for Killyclogher as he likes to bomb forward with the ball. Coalisland were poor against Killyclogher but one area where they had success was charging through the middle, they were able to find plenty of space directly in front of goal, but they were wasteful with their shooting.

Slaughtneil won’t have Paudie McGuigan available who went off injured late in the game against Derrygonnelly. Kearney said that the injury to McGuigan was not as bad as was initially feared and he should be back within a couple of weeks.

The full interview with John Joe Kearney is available in store today or online here.