Hard work backboning Antrim’s All-Ireland championship run

By Niall Gartland

ANTRIM camogie manager Elaine Dowds has heaped praise on the commitment of her players ahead of Saturday’s All-Ireland Intermediate Championship semi-final against Meath at Kingspan Breffni.

We’re not quite in dream-season territory just yet – they make no bones about their ultimate ambition – but there’s no doubt they’re in a rich vein of form and their recent All-Ireland U23 Championship success and retention of their Ulster Senior Championship suggests that Antrim camogie is in very rude health indeed.

Those two teams ran in parallel with an overlap in both players and management, so it’s been a busy spell to put it mildly.

They did earn themselves a mini-break by virtue of bypassing the All-Ireland quarter-finals (which was particularly important as it coincided with Lucia McNaughton’s wedding) and now they find themselves one game away from a place in the All-Ireland final.

And it’s fair to say they’ve put in the hard yards behind the scenes…

Manager Elaine Dowds said: “We’ve been on the go since October, training four times a week without any let-up. It’s intense. By the time we finish – and I hope we get into August – it’ll have been a 10-month season. Four nights a week is a massive commitment with all the travel involved. We’re heading to Dublin for a challenge game, so that breaks things up a wee bit too. You don’t want to go a month without a game.”

“I would assume every county hurling and football team trains four times a week, and we do exactly the same. We have the same amount of travel involved.

“Those girls are coming straight from work, grabbing a bite to eat and heading straight out the door. They might not get home until 10 o’clock at night. It’s a massive, massive commitment.”

The Saffrons have won five successive games leading into Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final clash. Four of those games were against Ulster opposition (they twice accounted for Derry and Down) while they overcame Kerry in their final group stage match. They laid the platform for victory over Kerry with a blistering start, racing into a 2-4 to 0-1 lead, though Dowds is mindful that their opponents may have been a little rusty.

“I don’t read too much into the Kerry game. When you take four teams that are already seeded and have all qualified for a quarter-final, you have to wonder what sort of team you’re actually playing against. You’re guaranteed to get there anyway. For Kerry to have to travel up to us as well, that does take it out of you.”

“I think we were 10-1 up after about 10 minutes against Kerry. We got off to a dream start and they were maybe a bit slow out of the blocks with the travelling and everything else. But after that, it was neck and neck. There was very little between us. I knew Kerry would qualify alongside ourselves for the semi-final spot, so I was glad to avoid them, to be truthful.”

Speaking last week, Dowds said that she was yet to conduct a deep-dive into their forthcoming opponents, Meath. The Royals did the business against Derry in the last-eight and can’t be taken for granted, though Dowds insists Antrim won’t deviate too much from their usual way of playing.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t know a huge amount about them. I have a copy of their match from the weekend when they beat Derry.

“I’ll catch up on that game but it won’t impact how we play. We’ll stick to our game plan because it’s worked for us all year and that’s our priority. We’ll identify their key players and mark them appropriately, but we’ll stick to what works for us.”

The Saffrons last won the All-Ireland Intermediate Championship in 2021 with a superb victory over Kilkenny at Croke Park. In her own playing days, Dowds won two All-Ireland Intermediate titles herself, though she notes with a tinge of regret that she didn’t get the chance to play in the All-Ireland Senior Championship. The structures are different these days and getting a crack at the very best teams is an appetising prospect.

“Jim Nelson took us when we won the junior championship in 1997, and that brought us up into intermediate. I think it was 2000 and 2003 – I’m terrible with dates. They were absolutely brilliant years. To tell you the truth, we probably should have won more and let a few slip. We had a really good team. Rossa were strong, Loughgiel were strong and Dunloy were strong. Around 2004 or 2005, Rossa went on to win the All-Ireland and that group made up the core of that team.”

“I don’t think we were automatically promoted – that’s not how it worked. Maybe you had to apply to go up. I don’t think we ever went into senior then. I do remember playing the likes of Cork, Kilkenny and Wexford in challenge games, and at that time we had a brilliant team and were well able to take it to them. That’s why, when we won in 2021 and went up to senior, it was a massive, massive deal for us.”