How does a squad that almost exclusively played ‘B’ and ‘C’ grade underage football between them end up on the cusp of three senior championships in a row in a county as tough to win as Derry? Cahair O’Kane looks at the return of the Sean O’Learys...

IF club football is a numbers game then Newbridge must have Manchester City’s accountants working for them.

They are one hour away from a third successive Derry senior championship title.

Win or lose on Sunday, their achievements have displayed complete insolence towards the norms.

Their opponents Magherafelt won three Derry minor ‘A’ championships between 2021 and 2024.

Newbridge have won three underage ‘A’ grade titles in 60 years – all three of them at under-14, two of them in the mid-1970s.

The last of them came 19 years ago.

Nathan Rocks and Ciaran Devlin are the two survivors of that team. Declan McKeever and Ciaran Brooks (scorer of perhaps the most famous point in their history) are both older.

Behind them, nobody on the Newbridge squad – including their entire starting team this weekend – ever played a single game of ‘A’ grade football the whole way through underage.

Their opponents in underage football most years consist largely of the clubs that make up Derry’s junior league.

This year’s minor team was beaten in the group stage by Ardmore, the team that finished very bottom of Derry’s adult footballing pyramid.

Magherafelt’s U16s won another ‘A’ championship on Thursday evening, beating Castledawson. They’ve built an incredibly strong conveyor belt that has them in a fifth senior final in seven years.

Of the 16 adult senior clubs, Newbridge’s U16s finished lowest in the 2026 leagues.

Their AGM booklet annually contains reports from the managers of underage teams.

In 2023, they entered an U15 team having previously been unable to field.

The four oldest players had, until that point, had to go and play for Ballymaguigan just to get football.

Because three of the squad were too young for U17 football, having no U15 team would have meant they too would have had to elope.

“This would have resulted in seven Newbridge lads playing for a different club,” wrote manager Padraic Lynch in his report.

That year’s U15 team had eight U13s playing up every week to allow them to field. They didn’t win a game.

In any given year, half the U16 team is playing U14 and the other half is playing minor.

A lot of training sessions consist of backs against forwards - there aren’t the numbers for anything else.

Because so many players are playing across two age grades, training is always secondary to games. Teams would do well to train once a week around fixtures.

There are years they have B grade teams and there are years they have C grade teams, but the truth of their approach lies when they fall in the middle.

“If we have a chance, if we’re borderline C or B, we’ll play B without a doubt and take our maybe five or six hammerings and be competitive in three games,” says Matt Murphy.

“It’s all about learning and getting players ready for moving into senior football. It’s not about decorating the mantlepiece with underage trophies.

“We always look to play up where we can.”

All of this is the norm for Newbridge. The whole place is four square miles. They share land borders with Magherafelt, Bellaghy, Castledawson, Ballymaguigan and Cargin.

Bellaghy, Cargin and Moneyglass, even a few Magherafelt parents would send children to Anahorish Primary School, where in a good year they might have a dozen boys, except half of them might not be Newbridge players.

Part of that comes from Anahorish being in the stream for kids to get into the coveted Magherafelt schools.

Newbridge are far from the only club to face these issues.

They are, however, unique in facing them and going for three senior championships in a row.

So how are they doing it?

* * * * *

IN 2021, there was a realisation that they would need an adult thirds team.

Matt Murphy pushed the idea from within and took charge for its maiden voyage the following year.

It was all at ‘B’ level but they’d had a bit of success that year. The U17s won a league and championship double, and the U15s and U20s won their respective championships.

The seniors had been tripped by Bellaghy at the first hurdle that year. The John McLaughlin Cup had last dropped into The Thatch Bar in 1989 and in-between times were just that, in-between senior and intermediate football.

Five years ago, they lost to Bellaghy in the first round of the championship and ended up in a relegation playoff that became their sliding doors moment.

Claudy had endured a horrible time in senior football. Everyone saw the game as a foregone conclusion.

Final score: Newbridge 0-12 Claudy 0-13.

They were condemned to relegation only for a winter reshuffle to save them.

Instead of playing intermediate football in 2022, they reached their first senior semi-final in 31 years. Their five consecutive semi-finals since matches their run between 1987 and ’91.

They were aware in 2021 that despite the seniors’ struggles, a good spell might be on the cards and that to facilitate it, they’d need to create a bit of room in their reserve team.

Murphy, who was involved with the U15B championship winning team alongside Neil Young (father of Aodhan, Sean and Eamon) and Gary Walls of the famous local footballing family, was among those looking down the line.

“At that stage, I pushed to get a thirds team going based on the fact that over the next three or four years, we’ll have 15 or 20 players coming here that we need to get bled into senior and reserve football and maybe push some of the old hands out of reserve football just to keep that group going.

“It’s all about retention for us.”

* * * * *

STUMBLING upon the right management has helped.

Former Antrim defender Kevin Brady hails from Moneyglass originally but has, ironically, played a massive part in the development of both Newbridge and Magherafelt.

Living in Magherafelt with his children playing underage for them, the joint Newbridge boss was manager for both of St Mary’s Magherafelt’s 2017 and 2022 MacRory Cup successes.

Rossa players Odhran Lynch, Conor McCluskey, Simon McErlain and Cormac Murphy all started on the first team, while Eoin McEvoy, Conall Heron, Ronan Walls and a young Conall Higgins (as a sub) were on the second.

Goalkeeper James Gribbin, who’s been out injured for the guts of two years now, was the only Newbridge player to start across the two successful finals.

The partnership of Brady and Gary Hetherington, who hails from the famous Donaghmore and Tyrone footballing family, has worked to perfection.

Newbridge play a brand of hard-running football that requires a serious physical profile.

Danny Doherty, who is Derry City FC’s full-time S&C coach, has been responsible for building their engines but that process began before him.

Padraig McGrogan and brothers Conor and Mark Doherty were just finding their feet with Derry when Rory Gallagher came in. The way that squad transformed physically during Covid provided those players with an insight as to the levels required physically.

They brought that back to Newbridge and drove the standard. The ‘Bridge probably would not be where they are now had those three players not had that exposure at such a critical early point in their careers.

McGrogan missed their first championship success in 2024, making it all the remarkable given the leadership role he assumed on and off the pitch.

Last year they had no injuries of any significance.

This season, there have been niggles and knocks. The loss of Mark McGrogan, the club’s reigning player of the year, is significant but they’ve adapted.

Their age profile of the 19 players used against Glen two weeks ago outlines the reality of their building process.

Odhran McGlone is the oldest at 30.

19-year-olds Cathair McBride (son of former Derry and Loup captain Johnny, who lives beside the McGrogans in Newbridge) and Ronan Doherty are the youngest.

The spread between 19 and 30 is almost perfect. Two at 20, two at 21, two at 22, two at 23, four at 24, one at 25, one at 27, two at 28.

Regardless of this weekend, that says there ought to be a fair bit of rope left in this outfit.

But as others have found, the window of opportunity can catch a sudden gust and hit you flush on the nose.

“Whilst you say that team will be about, you have to factor in the chance of injuries, even emigration still, boys getting married, having to move away for work and different things,” says Murphy, who doubles up as club treasurer.

“On that panel, I think there’s only a couple of boys that are married. There’s not too many getting up in the middle of the night to do the bottle feeds.

“On paper you think that team will be about but different things could happen and they break up. It’s definitely a case of making hay when it’s here.”

But where Newbridge are small in numbers, they are big in tradition.

The club won at least one championship in every decade between the 1930s and the 1980s.

Psychologically, that plays its part to this day. Newbridge teams grow up knowing that if they get it right at senior level, championships are never beyond them.

Even in harder times, they’ve never fallen any further than the top end of intermediate football.

It allows for a mindset that is three parts ambitious and two parts circumspect.

“I don’t think there’s any real science to it. It’s probably just a generational thing,” says Murphy.

“We’re very aware of that, that it probably is a unique bunch.

“It is a numbers game and we’re well used to being up and down through the leagues. We’re under no illusions that there might be some time in the near future we could be back in relegation battles and down playing intermediate football.

“That’s just the way it goes with a small place like ours.”

There just aren’t many places like theirs.