JOHNNY McINTOSH: Our magic moment

I’M chairman of Glenariffe so I was obviously over the moon with our minor team’s success at the Ulster Hurling Minor Championship hosted by Ballinascreen on the final day of the year.

Our club had never won an Antrim Minor Championship before, so to go on from that and win Ulster really shows the magic of the GAA, and I have to give mention as well to Glenravel who we’re amalgamated with at this level.

There’s a lot of hard work that goes into a small club like Glenariffe and I suppose we’re lucky in that this minor crop are a generational group of players that came out of a relatively big class at primary school.

The whole competition in Ballinascreen was brilliant, they host it every year, and it was like the culmination of an FA Cup run for ourselves.

We’ve been doing well at underage level and to finally win the county championship was unreal. We’ve lads who, in the space of a year, won the Mageean Cup, the All-Ireland Colleges followed up by their success at minor level so it’s been an amazing experience for those four or five players.

We’re managed by Mickey Gettens and I’m delighted for him and all the rest of the coaches because they put in such an effort and this has hopefully made it all worthwhile. We recently reached the Antrim Intermediate Championship final as well, and though we were disappointed to lose to Carey Faughs, we’re heading in the right direction and hopefully that encourages young people to stick around the club. That has been a big problem in the Glens in recent decades and why you’re seeing even the bigger Glens clubs amalgamating at underage level.

Since my last column, Sleacht Néill played their All-Ireland semi-final against Sarsfields and were very unfortunate to come out second-best and I think they’ll be really kicking themselves. With that missed goal chance in the final minute, it’ll be looked at as one that got away.

Sports can be very cruel at that highest level – you look at Dunloy who have been in four All-Ireland finals and lost them all. You have to just keep on kicking on the door and from what I heard coming from the Sleacht Néill camp after the game, it would be no surprise if they come back and finally break through that glass ceiling because they’re getting closer and closer to getting that positive result and reaching the final.

They really should have won though, and I suppose without being too much of a conspiracy theorist about it, I thought the referee was sore on Sleacht Néill.

I’m not saying he was bad per se, but if you were judging the fairness of his decisions, I’d say they weighed 55/45 in favour of Sarsfields. At the same time, even with that, Sleacht Néill were right in the game until the final whistle and if they’d scored that late goal chance, they’d have been full value for victory.

It’s a tough one to take and I know how hard they’ll have worked in recent months. Looking at my own club’s efforts at winning their minor titles, people don’t realise how much work is being done in the winter months because so much of that training is being done off the pitch. Our lads did a lot of work in forest parks and gyms. It’s a lot of dirty, tough work that nobody really sees so it’s a credit to the players involved that they stuck at it and got their rewards.

It’s just a pity for Sleacht Néill, but, as the old saying goes, there’s always next year and I’ve no doubt that they’ll be back.

Finally, I’m looking forward to working with the Antrim u-20s this year under Michael McShane.

Davy Fitzgerald coming in as senior manager is a massive boost to the county, the levels he’s trying to bring, and hopefully that feeds through at underage level.

Derry have won All-Ireland u-20 B and Ulster A titles in recent seasons. Don’t be surprised to see that start to bear fruit at senior level, so it’s very important that Antrim aren’t left behind.

If you’re not producing good young players, you can forget about having good senior teams. Nobody is expecting miracles right away from Davy but he’s got a plan and he sees issues that need sorted so I’m confident that he’ll make his mark in a positive sense.

I know the senior team is training very hard and I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do in their upcoming National League campaign.