IN FOCUS: Antrim footballer Patrick McBride – will there be one final chapter?

Niall Gartland chats to Patrick McBride about his Antrim playing days, which mightn’t be over yet…

Take note that Patrick McBride hasn’t formally retired from intercounty football.

Early this February, it emerged that the long-standing Antrim footballer had pulled the pin after 14 consecutive years of service. There was no grand retirement statement – instead, the news was revealed by a local journalist with their ear close to the ground. Classic sleuthing basically.

But still, put two and two together and it sure sounded like McBride had hung up the boots for good. He’d pieced together a lengthy intercounty career at a success-starved county, has a young son – Luca – and is now in his early thirties.

There was one layer of intrigue though. He made the decision after a Division Four round two league defeat to Tipperary, so the season was well and truly underway at that stage. Disgruntlement maybe? Well, we didn’t ask, but he certainly wasn’t enjoying the full-throttle existence of a modern-day intercounty footballer.

“To be honest, when people ask me if I miss it, I think because I wasn’t enjoying it, it made it hard to miss. I was enjoying my time with St John’s and once that split season came in, I felt like I never got near the club during the year, and I hated that.

“In the first few months after I left, I was still training the same amount with St John’s and doing your own stuff outside of it, but I had time to go home, see Luca for a while and help with putting him to bed.

“In the past, I was going to work, straight to Antrim training, and then by the time I got home, he’d already be asleep.”

On occasion though, McBride found it difficult watching on from the stands. The Tailteann Cup defeat to Wicklow made for agonising viewing as Antrim relinquished a commanding lead. His natural instinct was to muck in when they were under the cosh, but of course, that just wasn’t possible.

“The only times I really missed it were when I was working with the BBC on the day of the Derry game and watching the match. I did think I’d love to be playing here.

“Then I was at the Wicklow game. I think they were nine points up and, once I saw Wicklow coming back, I wanted to be on the pitch. I’ve been in that situation loads of times where a team’s coming back and I’ve maybe helped manage the game. I was watching it thinking I’d love to be there right now, especially in those last 15 minutes.

“But other than that, that was really it. Whenever I was at the matches, if you asked me if I’d like to be playing, of course I’d say I’d love to be playing a match. But apart from that, no. In the end, it was an easy decision for me.”

An easy decision but the door is firmly open. McBride, who is now 32, says that in the right circumstances, he’d have no compunctions about donning the Saffron jersey again.

“The way I see it, I didn’t leave in a retirement sense. I left because it got to the stage where I was leaving the house to go somewhere I wasn’t enjoying, and leaving somewhere I really was enjoying, with Luca and Maeve [his wife] at home.

“I never actually said to myself, that’s me done playing county football. It was more, that’s me done for now. I’ll have to think about it again at some stage, but I haven’t closed the door, if you get me.

McBride also admits that he sees the Antrim footballers as his “teammates.” He’s made friends for life – but he’s careful not to pry.

“To be honest, I still view them as teammates. I started the year with them and played two games, but I know what I’m like in a team. I wouldn’t be asking what the team is or what the tactics are. I stay away from that.

“Some of my best friends are on the team, Paddy McAleer and Marc Jordan are two of my best mates. Marc’s a laugh. Big Marc, he actually plays better when you abuse him before matches. If you remind him of all the things he does wrong, it gets him going.

“I’m also really close to Conor Hand, Niall Burns and lads like that. We drove to training together a couple of times a week for a few years, then all of a sudden you don’t see them as much. I still talk to them, but I wouldn’t be asking about tactics or anything like that, and they wouldn’t tell me either.”

Playing for Antrim was always an ambition for McBride. The big moment arrived rather organically under the tutelage of Liam ‘Baker’ Bradley back in 2011.

“To be honest, I always wanted to play for Antrim. I remember seeing a video of Colm Cooper, he was my favourite player growing up, where he was a kid in a Kerry jersey saying that when he grew up he was going to play for Kerry.

“I had an Antrim jersey on and said to my mummy and daddy, “Here, take a video of me. I’m going to say that when I grow up I’m going to play for Antrim.”

“I used to stand outside Casement waiting for players to come out the back doors so I could get their autographs. I loved playing for my club, right the way through from U14s.

“Then, when I was a minor, ‘Baker’ rang me one night after a club match and asked if I’d come to training. I was thinking, Jeez, I’m there already.

“Because I was already involved in the development squads, I wasn’t really looking at senior intercounty at that stage.

“When you’re a minor, your whole world is minor football. That’s all you’re focused on.”

While silverware proved elusive, there were plenty of happy memories for McBride down the years. Debuts, Croke Park outings, personal accolades…it certainly wasn’t all hard-luck stories.

“My best memory would be my championship debut in Casement in 2013. I started against Monaghan. It was actually a really close game and they pulled away in the second half.

“That was amazing for me because I was just a kid, playing wing-back in an Ulster Championship match at Casement. Casement was class.

“The last two Ulster Championship games I really enjoyed. I know it’s a team game, but if you look back at personal highlights, I got Man of the Match in both of them. I was slagging Jordy and McAleer that I didn’t play against Derry, so my Man of the Match streak is still alive.”

McBride said: “The Croke Park days were brilliant. I loved playing in Croke Park. I played there three times with Antrim—once in the league final against Louth and then twice in the Tailteann Cup. There were probably more bad days than good overall, with defeats, disappointments, relegations and missing out on promotion, but there were a lot of great times as well. I really enjoyed it.”

There were plenty of managerial switch-ups during his career – he played under seven management teams in total. Not an ideal state of affairs and he wishes Frank Fitzsimons and Gearoid Adams had been granted more time at the helm.

“I always look back to when Frank Fitzsimons and Gearoid Adams were managing Antrim. Two really good Antrim men. We got promoted and then stayed up in Division Three the following year.

“A lot of the lads who are still around today stayed around because there was a good culture in that team. Me, Ryan Murray, Declan Lynch, (Dermot) McAleese, Peter Healy, Paddy McAleer – there were lads who stayed for years and kept playing because something good had been built under Frank and Gearoid.

“They only got two years and then they were gone. You looked at it and thought, something was building there.

“I’ll always speak highly of people like Frank. Managers can come in and take a wage, but Frank was there because he genuinely cared about Antrim.

“I remember boys coming into the panel with no gear, and Frank would actually buy it for them himself. I remember him in O’Neills buying T-shirts for new lads coming into the panel. I was standing there thinking, he’s not even getting paid here, and he’s spending his own money to make sure these lads have gear.

“To me, that’s somebody who’s there for Antrim. He wanted Antrim to do better. When you have people like that involved – people who genuinely want to move Antrim forward, they’re looking at everything, not just the senior team. They’re thinking about the whole county.”

He cites Louth as an example of what can be achieved with joined-up thinking. The Wee County are on the cusp of their first All-Ireland SFC semi-final appearance since 1957, and McBride points out that they made drastic improvements in less than a decade.

“It’s demoralising sometimes. Yes, I’m buzzing for what Louth have done, getting to an All-Ireland semi-final, but the last time I played against Louth we beat them. The time before that we beat them by eight points in a qualifier on their own pitch. That was probably about seven years ago.

“Seven years isn’t actually that long when you think about it. It’s not as if they had to wait 20 years for a completely new group of players. They did a lot of really good work, they obviously invested, and they had things happening around their senior team.

“When you see the way things have progressed for them, you have to ask, Why are we not doing what they’re doing? That’s hard to take sometimes, but things need to improve.

“I think there needs to be a proper sit-down discussion about it, and maybe a group put together to work on it.”

Another obvious frustration was the seemingly never-ending Casement Park saga. The stadium, which was officially closed in 2013, previously had a capacity of more than 30,000 people. It was a focal point for the county, particularly within Belfast, and McBride, who was speaking before the news emerged that the ground capacity will be significantly lower than planned, has his fingers crossed that it will be built in the next few years. And who knows, maybe he’ll even get a chance to play in it.

“When Casement closed, I remember thinking, Right, it’ll be class in a few years when it’s back.

“Over the last few years we’ve joked about whether I’d still be around to get a game for Antrim in the new Casement, and how long I’d have to keep playing. It’s looking unlikely now, but I’m still hopeful I might get a game there with St John’s.

“It’s been so frustrating over the years. It’s hard not having a proper home ground that everybody associates with Antrim. I know we had Corrigan, but at times we had to move around because of different circumstances.

“For me, though, the biggest thing is the kids. Going to matches in Casement was different. The atmosphere, especially on a night game, was brilliant.

“We used to go up to Andersonstown during the week just to watch whatever game was on. You were always around Gaelic games – football, hurling, ladies football, camogie, whatever it was.

“A redeveloped Casement would be massive. It would be good for hundreds of reasons, not just one. I’m staying hopeful.

“Hopefully things improve, and maybe I’ll be back there at some stage. There’s plenty of time – I’m still in my prime!”