By Michael McMullan

GOALKEEPER Michael Byrne has stepped away from the Antrim senior squad but manager Mark Doran said the door is always open.

It’s the same with former skipper Dermot McAleese who retired after the 2025 season, with Doran also holding talks with the Portglenone man since taking over as manager.

McAleese was on co commentary for Ulster GAA on Antrim’s defeat on Wednesday night and the door is open should be wish to return inter-county football.

“Mick (Byrne) has stepped away and he is a big loss,” Doran told Gaelic Life. “Mick rung me and the hunger is just not there at the minute.

“I know from past experience, talking to a man and hunger isn’t there and you’re trying to talk him into it.

“Mick knows the door is firmly open and the same as Dermot McAleese, we’d hoped to have Dermot back,” Doran added.

“Dermot McAleese is one of the best players in Antrim. I had met Dermot four or five weeks ago and we’d had a chat.

“Dermot, just at the minute, didn’t feel the appetite to come back. I would still be hoping Dermot would come back.

“He knows the door is sitting firmly wide open for him but again but you’d also have to respect his decision.

“At the minute, Dermot’s not part of the squad but I’ll pray and hope in the next lot of weeks he will, but that’s up to Dermot.”

Wednesday’s game in Owenbeg was Doran’s first competitive outing in charge of the Saffrons. He took both the positive and negatives out of it with the visit of Carlow kicking their league campaign into a gear later this month.

A two-pointer from goalkeeper John McNabb left them just two points adrift of Derry at half-time, having closed the home side from any goal chances.

Four missed chances in the third quarter – Derry took two points from their four chances in the same period – cost Antrim a chance to ask questions of their opponents.

The plus points were handing out debuts and sticking with Derry for 40 minutes but not scoring for the entire second half is the “most disappointing” thing for Doran.

“I know the scoreboard maybe doesn’t look good at the end but I’d have to say, I thought for 40 minutes we matched Derry really, really well,” he said.

“We started the second half with missed chances, three or four in a row. I think all the shots were on, I think it was just our shot execution. I think we could have went in front and maybe given us a wee bit of a kick.

“When you miss that, it is an energy zapper when you’re going up and missing.  With 20 minutes left, I remember looking at the scoreboard. It was 9-7 but I felt we had missed three or four chances.

“The next thing, we turned over two balls and Derry just went and punished us, what all good teams do at that level.

“We were going up the field turning the ball over and Derry were hitting us hard on the break.  I’m a great believer in you win or you learn and there was a lot of learning for us.

“At the end of the day if we’d have been training tonight, we wouldn’t have got anything near what we got out of tonight.

“Also, it’s actually given the boys a chance. I think we’d maybe six boys starting for their debuts and then another five came in getting their debuts. So, it’s given them boys exposure to that sort of football, but we move on.

“We wouldn’t be happy with the last 20 minutes. We wouldn’t be happy not scoring in the second half because we do spend a lot of our training shooting.

“That is the most disappointing thing, playing 30 minutes and not scoring. It’s very important to keep the scoreboard ticking over but there’s nothing we can do about it now.

“We just have to try and be better. We meet up on Friday night, we’ll talk about it, we’ll try and be better for Sunday (at home to Donegal), it’s another tough battle with the All-Ireland finalists coming.

“It’s a challenge for the Antrim players to try and get themselves up for it and right for it. We’ll try and last in the game longer than 40 minutes.”

Doran hopes to have a few more players available having been without QUB trio Joe Finnegan, Ryan McQuillan and Cathal Hynds who were on Sigerson Cup action on Wednesday with Ronan Quinn playing for St Mary’s.

Tiernan McCormick is on the Ulster University squad but missed their defeat to DCU with an injury.

“Paddy McAleer picked up a knock at training and we lost Adam Loughran in the warm-up,” Doran added.

“Then Eunan Walsh, Niall Burns, boys carrying knocks. We were taking no risk with anybody because at the end of the day, our league is the most important thing.

“We did say coming here tonight, if there’s any wee doubts at all, you’re not in. The most positive thing was about how many new boys we got exposed to that sort of level of football. It was good seeing them in that environment.”