PAUL Shiels can see history repeating itself.

He won his sixth Antrim senior Hurling Championship title last weekend, and Dunloy’s third in a row.

He also said that the win reminds him of his first. He was part of the 2007 team which won the club’s 10th title. The team included Gregory O’Kane, the current manager, as well as the Richmond brother Paddy and Liam and Ally Elliott, the club legends who have since retired.

The roles have reversed now as Shiels was the young buck back then, but now he is the elder statesman of the team.

“I was coming into a team back then that had dominated. It felt like I was coming onto their team. Now I am in their shoes, and we have a group of young players coming through. Over time it evolves like that, next thing you are one of the old ones.”

Shiels says that he didn’t think he would ever win six.

“They are so hard to win, when you win one then you think how can you maintain that. It is one of them things. You just keep at it and keep at it.”

Shiels says this year’s achievement was extra special for one particular reason.

“This one was more satisfying. This year the way it ended up we had nine players on the county panel. We never really saw them this year. We had one league game when we had the full panel available to us.

“We were heading into the championship when we hadn’t played together properly since the county final the previous year. The group stages allowed us to find our feet and we grew into the championship.”

They had expected that Rossa might be their biggest challenge. That is how it was set up going into the final.

“Rossa was the best team we had played last year. We had prepared so hard for them. We thought the final was going to be battle. We had two close battles last year. To win it so comfortably was so satisfying.”

Dunloy were much the better team than Rossa last weekend. They won by 3-23 to 1-14. The game was pretty much decided by half time as the Cuchullains led by 3-7 to 0-6 after goals from Chrissy McMahon, Conal Cunning and Seaan Elliott.

“We won the championship last year but we set out this year to try to improve. It was great to win it comfortably.

“We studied a lot of film. We studied their games from last year. We studied our games this year. We got our game plan right, we got our match ups right. And we pulled the trigger on the day.”

The ambitions of the Dunloy team are to build on this result.

“You want to go as far as you can. You just have to take every game as it comes. It is a young group of players and they are hungry.

“It is a great time of year to be involved. You are the only team left in your county training through the dark evenings. We are happy to be training.”

The challenge for Dunloy is sticking to the task at hand as they have until the end of November till the Ulster club hurling championship starts.

“We just have to manage it as best we can. I know that our footballers are still in the championship and they will be training away.

“Our hurlers just have to work away and keep the bodies right. It is nice to have games week in week out, and playing matches rather than training. So we have a bit of time to wait but it is a nice complaint to have.”