John Martin: Antrim’s challenge to show up on the radar

RADAR…Antrim were not on Eamonn O’Shea’s

“SO would Antrim have expected to beat Kerry at the weekend then?” That’s what former Tipperary manager Eamonn O’Shea asked me on the Monday after Antrim had been beaten by Kerry in the Allianz League play-off last year.

Would they what, Eamonn? Would Antrim have expected to beat Kerry? Of course Antrim would have expected to beat Kerry. Kerry? A Christy Ring Cup team?

I suspect therefore that when Antrim manager PJ O’Mullan, in his post-match interview on Sunday, referred to “people who think Antrim should be hurling in a better place”, he was talking about people like me.

The above conversation with Eamonn O’Shea took place when he was on a visit to Belfast to promote academic links between St Mary’s Christian Brothers Grammar School and NUI Galway where he is a Professor in the School of Business and Economics.

O’Shea visited Belfast on the Monday morning after Antrim had been beaten and was probably a bit surprised that much of the questioning from the local media didn’t concern Tipp’s league performances or upcoming Munster Championship semi-final. The assembled Belfast-based reporters were instead more concerned on his views on how Antrim hurling could have sunk so low and, more importantly, what could be done to get it out of the doldrums.

O’Shea answered the questions as best he could with his customary courtesy. But the truth is that he wasn’t really that interested in how the Division 1B/2A play-off had gone the previous Saturday. In fact, he wasn’t even too sure what the result was.

Sure, he gave well-meaning suggestions about what can be done to improve standards outside the top tier and relayed a few anecdotes about superb hurlers from outside the ‘traditional’ counties that had been under his wing during his many years as NUI Galway Fitzgibbon team manager – but it was clear that Antrim are not on his hurling radar.

After the formal interview was done, I walked the few minutes to the school pitch with O’Shea, making general conversation about unimportant matters such as the Belfast weather. In the middle of the conversation, O’Shea turned to me in all sincerity and asked the question: “So would Antrim have expected to beat Kerry at the weekend then?”

Kerry the (then) Christy Ring Cup team. The last time Antrim had played in the Christy Ring Cup they cantered to victory over Carlow by 17 points in the final – and they eased off on them in the final quarter.
Ah, Carlow. How times have changed. Fast forward six years and Antrim are being taught a lesson by Carlow in Division 2A of the National League at Ballycastle. Last year’s championship defeat at Dr Cullen Park was bad enough. But at Ballycastle? How could that happen?

In a candid and honest interview after the final whistle on Sunday, O’Mullan questioned the logic of those people who think that Antrim should be hurling in better company. Even after the previous week’s result in Westmeath, even after last year’s championship defeat, I firmly expected Antrim to beat Carlow and keep their promotion hopes alive. Further to that, I also expected Antrim to go on and reach the final where they would then beat Westmeath.

O’Mullan admitted afterwards that he couldn’t explain the performance. There was a gameplan set out for the players and they didn’t execute it. But what a lot of Antrim supporters spoke about after the game was the lack of fight in their team. Carlow, in the first half in particular, at times were lining up to take shots at the Antrim posts, stringing three or four passes together in the middle of the park to line up a score without a challenge going in from a Saffron shirt. Carlow must have been amazed at the amount of room they had on Sunday.

There’s no doubting that what O’Mullan says is correct. There are indeed those with an inflated sense of where Antrim hurling belongs, buoyed by that (relatively) golden period of the late 80s and early 90s. But a cursory glance over past league records will show that those teams also shipped some heavy defeats, as did the teams of the early noughties that lit up All-Ireland quarter-finals against Tipp and Wexford who have league blotches on their copybooks against the likes of Westmeath and Meath.

Aside from Kerry, every county in the MacCarthy Cup has a larger playing base than Antrim. There are currently 28 Antrim clubs in the All County Leagues; Offaly has 48, Wexford has 54. Even Westmeath has 31. So maybe the more pertinent question to ask is ‘why has Westmeath been failing to deliver for so long?’

Has it not always been like this? Maybe Antrim’s position in relation to the top sides hasn’t actually changed over the past 30 years. Maybe it’s just that Carlow, Kerry and Westmeath have finally got their act together after 125 years and joined Antrim in the chasm that exists between MacCarthy and Christy Ring Cups.

Maybe the fact that Antrim have, aside from a few seasons, retained Division One status for the best part of 30 years is a minor hurling miracle. Maybe after years of punching above their weight, the fact that Carlow, Westmeath and Kerry have delivered on some of their potential says more about the apathy in those counties for the best part of a century than it does about Antrim in 2016.
Maybe Eamonn O’Shea’s hurling radar is right on the money.