JOHNNY McINTOSH: A note of caution

SLEACHT Néill couldn’t have any complaints about their All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Loughrea before Christmas, but personally I think some of the discourse arising from the result is both unfair and inaccurate.

There’s a school of thought that the defeat shines an unforgiving spotlight on both Sleacht Néill and Ulster hurling – that we’re way behind our counterparts from the rest of the country.

Personally, I think it’s an unfair assessment – at club level anyway. For one thing, there have been a lot of years where Munster teams have flattered to deceive. I genuinely think that Sleacht Néill have been really unlucky not to make the breakthrough at All-Ireland level.

I think last year’s defeat to Sarsfields was the big opportunity missed. That was their chance – Sleacht Néill were the better all-round team, they were more physical and played better but they just couldn’t get the scores on board. And even at that, they had the missed goal opportunity at the end.

Dunloy and Loughgiel have both been in All-Ireland finals so I absolutely wouldn’t say that Ulster teams simply aren’t good enough for this level. They’re coming up against really good teams and that has to be considered – Loughrea are excellent and people forget that they took that great St Thomas’ team to a replay in the county final back in 2022.

I also think, to be fair to Sleacht Néill, that they underperformed on the day. They had a decent first half but I’ve heard a lot of stories since that they’d a few niggling injuries, a few things like that going on in the background that people didn’t know about.

I have a lot of respect for Sleacht Néill, you have to remember that they’ve totally raised the bar. They’ve won six out of the nine last Ulster Championship titles and while they haven’t had the breakthrough at All-Ireland level, it hasn’t been for a lack of trying and they’ve suffered a few narrow All-Ireland semi-final defeats. I don’t think that’s a quality thing. I think maybe it’s one of those hoodoos and those are extremely hard to get over.

As for my Antrim colleagues, St John’s, they obviously didn’t play particularly well in the Ulster final but I don’t think they’ll be too disappointed. Realistically St John’s weren’t really equipped for Sleacht Néill, physically they were second best, and I also think there were probably more than content with what they achieved in Ulster.

That brings a very different dynamic. For Sleacht Néill, they’ve won every Derry title going for years so there’s a sense of setting the trophy on the shelf and getting back to training the next night. St John’s had two weeks of celebrations and understandably so given it had been over 50 years since they won a county title. They were in bonus territory whereas it would have been a disaster for Sleacht Néill not to win the Ulster title.

St John’s were disappointing on the night but I don’t think they were ever going to win that game in the circumstances. The first thing you have to do with that Sleacht Néill team is match them physically and that’s well known in Antrim. If you can’t match them in the heat of battle, you can forget about.

Loughrea definitely did match them physically and more. The surprising thing about the match is that it was probably Sleacht Néill who ended up worn out. With about 20 minutes to go, it looked like they were dead on their feet. Loughrea just ran all over the top of them in the second half which was a surprise to everyone.

But Sleacht Néill have been such brilliant champions over the years and they’ve set a new benchmark in Ulster which has been brilliant for club hurling here. Antrim teams are now realising that they have to do more than win Antrim.

It used to be the case that if you won Antrim, you almost cruised through Ulster and won by default. That’s clearly not the case, so Antrim teams know that they have to go up another 20 per cent to be competitive with Sleacht Néill, which is great in a way.

Maybe it does help the Antrim teams that traditionally would have better hurlers, but wouldn’t have the same level of physicality. Antrim teams who have beaten Sleacht Néill have been able to get up to that physical pitch and it wasn’t long ago that Dunloy got to the All-Ireland final, and I think that needs to be remembered when people talk about Ulster hurling not being good enough.