By Niall Gartland

THE Ulster Championship has been good to Antrim skipper Bronagh Devlin down the years – and she’s hoping to pocket another medal in Saturday’s Junior showdown with Derry at Brewster Park.

The Oakleafers are familiar opponents at this stage – they met in last year’s final, Antrim digging deep to run out 3-8 to 2-7 victors. That’s probably not the main reference point heading into Saturday though – they crossed paths in the group stages of this year’s competition with Antrim winning by 1-19 to 2-8 on that occasion.

Moneyglass star Devlin has won a handful of Ulster Junior titles at this stage, though she and her teammates went one better when they landed the Ulster Intermediate prize in 2023 with a memorable victory over Tyrone at Owenbeg in 2023.

They endured a down-turn in fortunes in subsequent seasons but are now back on the right track having clinched back-to-back promotions in the league. Bronagh says it reflects well on the county’s strength that they’ve been able to reassert themselves despite losing a cohort of key players in recent years.

“Looking back at that team in that intermediate game, I would say there’s maybe only a handful still involved, and maybe our main players now would have been the ones coming on and finishing the game.

“It’s good that once players retire and slip away, we have girls coming in and filling that gap again. I do think we’re definitely hitting our own targets and are starting to move really well. It’s just about making sure we’re peaking at the right time.”

While they’re favourites to come out on top of Saturday’s final, Derry are making strides and will quietly fancy their chances of springing an ambush.

Citing their recent group stage encounter, Devlin said: “They’re very well drilled and we really did struggle against them at times, especially with their forward movement. It was really, really good.

“That was a big game for us in terms of learning how to cope with that and overcoming it. I thought they were really good and we know ourselves we’ve a big 60 minutes ahead of us on Saturday.”

Both teams landed massive wins over London as well en route to this weekend’s showdown. Antrim notched a 4-21 to 1-6 victory over the Exiles while Derry ran riot on a scoreline of 7-19 of 0-3. Asked if their own win over London was in any way useful, Devlin remarked:

“We knew London didn’t have as much exposure to the new rules this year, so we really wanted to focus on playing our own game, forcing mistakes and things like that.

“Then with a significant lead, I still thought we kept the intensity up and kept things going. I suppose we knew ourselves we needed a full 60 minutes of playing how we want to play and playing well. That was one thing we wanted to focus on – even if we did get ahead, it was about keeping to our own standards and keeping the scoreboard ticking over.”