A DRIAN McGuckin hadn't been able to make it to Ballybofey, but when news filtered through on Sunday evening that Antrim had taken the scalp of Donegal, he didn't bristle with the shock. He knew some of the Antrim boys from his involvement with Jordanstown and, whatever they lacked, he knew it wasn't ability. And he knew Liam 'Baker' Bradley too. Any team with Baker at the helm would be capable of punching above its weight.

McGuckin was a young teacher in St Patrick's, Maghera, when Bradley arrived in the school in the mid-1970s. The school hadn't yet arrived as an Ulster football powerhouse but Baker understood he was entering a place where he could be happily consumed by the game. To get there, he'd had to pass his 11-plus exams. He would recognise this as his major academic achievement. He was in. Football would be his reward.

He was there at full-back when the school won its breakthrough McCrory Cup final in 1977. At corner-forward the previous year, he'd scored 2-3 against St Pat's, Cavan in the semi-final but, like Jimmy Greaves, he was dropped for the final. If there was any bitterness, he doesn't remember it. He was the youngest player on the panel, ready to immerse himself in the pressures and disappointments of top-level football. "Aye," he says. "It was a steep learning curve."

Baker was what McGuckin expected of a Bradley from Glenullin: passionate, determined, could play a bit. But he was more than that too. "Even then you could see his attention to detail," McGuckin remembers. "With some kids you'd wonder if they were taking anything in but with Liam you could see he was listening to your every word. He was interested in the things you were doing and why you were doing them."

Baker shrugs now thinking of that football-obsessed 15-year-old. He saw the same thing later in his own kids and in other families around him. If you came from Glenullin and didn't like football, you were in trouble. "Look around the place now," he says. "There isn't even a shop here. There's a chapel and a club. That's it. You'll always see one or two Glenullin boys on Derry teams and that's no coincidence. It's a rural place with nothing else only football, football, football."

His father wasn't obsessed with the game but for compensation he was suffocated on his mother's side. She was a Rafferty and played camogie. Two of her brothers, James and Paddy, had played for Derry in the 1940s and 1950s. Her nephew, Colm, was on the 1993 Derry panel that won the All-Ireland. When Glenullin, managed by Baker, captured their third county title in 2007, he figures he was related to more than half the team.

He was a player when they won their second in 1985, one of eight Bradley brothers who togged out on the day. "The McNicholls were about 100 yards up the road from us," says Baker. "There were nine of us and eight of them. When we were cubs, we spent our days kicking about, sometimes kicking the s**** out of each other. But when it came to the club, we were incredibly tight. We knew we had something special going."

His senior Derry career was pitifully short, encompassing just one year in 1979 and one championship defeat to Cavan for which he hadn't made the team. Mickey Moran took charge the following year and Baker wasn't part of his plans. A few years later, he ruptured his cruciate ligament and life as a top-level footballer was done. So he absorbed the blow and reinvented himself as a coach, bringing the same fire and passion to the sideline that he'd always carried onto the field.

He can't imagine there was a better county in Ireland to learn your trade. From Peter Stevenson, Glenullin's coach in 1985, to McGuckin and Moran, you could observe the standards of excellence that would bring success to Derry. Above all, there was Eamon Coleman. In 2001, during his second stint as senior manager, Coleman brought Baker in as U21 coach. He saw how strong and independent Coleman was, how his players would knock down walls for him. "For young players he was God," Baker recalls.

By then, his own kids Patrick and Eoin were growing into serious footballers. He coached them as U10s and, seeing their talent, quickly distanced himself from their development. "From 12s onwards I stayed away," he says. "I didn't want to put any extra pressure on them. It was the right thing to do. Daddies looking after their sons isn't always the best thing. Other guys in the club nurtured them."

When he played his last game for Glenullin, a reserve championship game in 1996, Baker played in the middle, supplying ball for Patrick in the corner. Patrick was 15 then, a year away from the club's senior side. Later, Eoin would make his senior debut at 15. When people gasp, Baker smiles and informs them he made his own senior debut at 14. "But it was no big deal," he says. "Back then we were a Division Three club. We had nobody else."

He remembers a league game against Bellaghy in 1975. "You remember John O'Gara? He was a fine midfielder, played for Roscommon. Well, John had been in college with a fella from Glenullin. He was up for a weekend and played in the middle for us. No one knew him. I told this to Mickey Greenan (Ulster GAA vice-chairman) a couple of weeks back and we had a right laugh about it. You wouldn't get away with that nowadays."

Stories and opinions fall in torrents from his mouth, not all of which you would feel comfortable setting out in black and white. Speaking his mind has always been his way, though. Ask him why he is called Baker and the answer is revealing. When they played soccer kickabouts as kids, Bradley always chose to be the Arsenal and Scottish striker Joe Baker while others fought over the rights to George Best, Bobby Charlton or Denis Law. Taking the populist line wasn't an option. He would be Baker and nobody else.

He likes to think this is how he has reared his sons and encouraged his teams to play: without inhibition or fear of self-expression. Some people think he is too arrogant but he's never minded that. They say he wears his heart on his sleeve which he takes as a euphemism for a man who tends to put people's noses out of joint. Someone told him he'd have been Derry manager by now if he'd put his head down and learned to play the game. To deny his own nature, though. How could he even think of it?

"In the GAA at the minute everybody seems fearful to say they're capable of winning things. I don't understand why. Anybody that knows me will tell you that any team I've been involved with I tell them to express themselves. Don't hold back. Hopefully the two boys have brought that onto the field. Both are very talented, gifted players. It's great to see them play with a bit of confidence."

He wonders why they wouldn't. Paddy McNeill, his selector with Antrim, told him something he likes to repeat to his players. "When you stand beside the guy who's marking you and you've the hard work done, you know you can be confident." For years he has watched Patrick and Eoin in the local field, working long into the night when the others had left for home. If they were cocky, it was in during those long, lonely hours that they earned the right.

"What you see with me is what you get," Baker says. "I'm just my own man. I do things the way I feel they should be done. Sometimes it irritates people or gets up their noses. I don't care about that. If I offend anybody I'm sorry. I don't mean to do it. It's just me, the way I do things. I try to do things to perfection. Any team I put on the field I expect them to be the same."

When the Derry job became vacant last year, his name was linked with the job but he knew it was Damien Cassidy's to turn down. Then McNeill came with an offer from Antrim and after two days' thinking, he subjected himself for interview. The following day they came back with a deal. He knew his appointment wouldn't be to everybody's satisfaction within Antrim. But he had over 20 years' coaching experience behind him at club and underage level. It was time to test himself at the top.

He knew a certain level of talent was there. Kevin Madden, the former Antrim footballer, had assisted him with Glenullin in 2007 and offered words of encouragement. Growing up in Derry with its knot of tight-knit football clubs in the south of the county, it was easy to have disparaging notions of Antrim football. It was riven by factions. There was a sharp city-country divide. And, most of all, hurling held sway, a sure sign of its lowly stature.

"You'd hear things in Derry. Like maybe there was a city thing going on. Or maybe hurling had something to do with it. I don't know. I went in with an open mind. What I wanted was to bring a club aspect to it. I wanted to unite everybody. And to be fair I didn't see any factions there. They were as united and as committed a bunch as I've seen. I think they needed something to buy into. They needed to see a target."

At their first night training in January, he spoke to Antrim chairman John McSparran. "Do us a favour," McSparran said, "get us out of Division Four." Baker offered no promises but, deep down, he figured it wasn't much of a target. He told the players that everything they did was geared towards Ballybofey on June 14 and to believe that with hard work behind them anything was possible.

"I always expected to get promotion and then we'd seven weeks to prepare for June 14. That was a huge bonus. We could sit back and watch the other teams and see how they were going. We trained really hard. What the Antrim players have been through is unbelievable. They've been to hell and back. I never heard one of them complaining and by God it was tough."

He knows how fleeting success can be but, for now, it's good to be the story of summer. He watched players who had never won a championship game arrive for training last Monday with a reason to stick their chests out. Sean McGreevy had been keeping goal for Antrim for the guts of 20 years yet, before Sunday, had only two championship wins to his name. Next Saturday against Cavan they'll try for another. A first Ulster final appearance since 1970 on the line. It is heady stuff.

They're all flying now. Just as Patrick and Eoin were in Ballybofey on Sunday, he'll be in Casement Park today, cheering the boys on in their Ulster semi-final against Tyrone. Derry haven't reached an Ulster final since 2000 now. "An eternity," he thinks. They ran into a good Armagh team that day and it has been Patrick's curse to have blossomed at a time when Tyrone and Armagh were at their strongest. He sees the wheel turning now, sees Eoin finally emerging from Patrick's shadow, maturing into the type of player he always felt he could be.

"He's 25 now. He broke his leg in his first year on the panel and took a while to get back. This year under Damien he's getting better and better. He's got the appetite for it. I

thought he was one of the best forwards in the country during the league. He was on fire. And I've seen him the last two or three weeks around the club. He's flying."

So he knows where you want to go next. To leap ahead to July 19, a hot day at Clones, Antrim and Derry fans walking shoulder to shoulder up the steep hill to St Tiernach's Park, county against county, father against beloved sons. He has to fight himself not to get ahead. "Antrim for Ulster, Derry for the All-Ireland," he likes to think in idle moments but he knows this isn't fertile terrain for him to be exploring.

"Listen," he says. "The happiest people in Ireland last week apart from Antrim people were Cavan people." In the end, the pragmatist dropped all those years ago by Adrian McGuckin and Mickey Moran wins out. Antrim are in safe hands.