Johnny McIntosh: The need for transition

IT’S the end of a very disappointing league campaign for Antrim where we only managed to get one victory.

We managed to keep the scores down and there was a decent performance against Wexford at the start of the campaign.

We were unlucky to lose to Wexford but our better scoring difference saved us. We were about 20 points better off than Carlow and nearly 40 points better off than Down.

Ultimately, at the start of a league campaign, you would have been very disappointed, from Antrim’s point of view, to say you’d play six games in Division 1B and you’ll only want win of them against a fairly poor Carlow team.

Then to have a heavy defeat to Kildare and Saturday’s defeat to Down was really worrying. More worrying was the nature of the Down loss.

Maybe the players knew in the back of their mind that it didn’t really matter, win, lose or draw, as Carlow were probably always going to lose to Dublin.

Maybe that did come into their psyche a bit, but I still think the performances have been way, way below par.

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I don’t want to be one of these people that’s got to jump on the bandwagon to be anti-Davy Fitzgerald, but I just thought his appointment wasn’t right for Antrim.

The Antrim team had five years with Darren Gleeson and he did a really good job, getting everything out the players that he could.

He pushed them when he needed to push them, he got results and some brilliant days for Antrim. He won two Joe McDonagh Cups, maintained Division One status and really did well.

As he was finishing, we had a couple of big-name retirements, Neil McManus and Conor McCann, while Niall McKenna picked up injuries and hasn’t been fit to return.

We lost ‘Coby’ Cunning last year and I felt we were transitional and needed a couple of years to rebuild what we had.

Instead, we appointed Fitzgerald and he was there to get results but he just simply hadn’t got the horses. That’s not a criticism of the players, that’s just where the squad was.

There were other players who had been at the end of a long journey, unbelievable players and unbelievable stalwarts for Antrim. They were just tired, there’s only so much players can give. A lot of that comes down to players just being burnt out

Personally, I felt we needed to appoint someone who came in with a longer-term plan, to rebuild Antrim over the next five or six years. Bringing in Davy, with the view of success in a couple of years, was always going to fail.

Transition for me over the past two years would have meant preserving as many of the older players as you can, keeping them around your squad and playing less.

We needed to be willing to take a few defeats, blood more young players but keep the old players around so you’re gaining from their experience.

Our u-20s were beaten by Meath and it devastating. There was so much good work that’s went on at that age group and so much progress has been made. A lot of that was the work we’re trying to do in terms of transitioning.

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We also needed that that transition to be driven from a senior management right down to the u-20s and minors, so that we could use it to try and bring Antrim back up gradually as opposed to constantly looking for that bounce.

I don’t see the benefit in looking for these bounce managers. I think it’s a longer term goal that we want. I suppose that in the past, what’s been done, has been done.

I think in terms of the team now, there are too many really top class players for Antrim not playing well. To me, that points to management, that doesn’t point to individuals.

For James McNaughton to score a point, for ‘Coby’ not to score at all, those are Antrim’s best two players. If they don’t score there’s something wrong with what you’re doing in terms of a system.

These boys, from what I can see, tend to be pulled out around the middle third constantly and they’re getting into dogfights and that’s not where those boys have made their name.

I just feel we’re maybe trying to make ourselves a bit competitive and maybe spoiling a few of our really high-profile best players and we’re not getting the most out of them. It is showing.

It mightn’t be the end of the world that we’ve lost the Down because that surprise factor is gone and we have four weeks to prepare. They’re going to head off to Portugal and get some really good training.

You’d be really disappointed if Antrim don’t come back to prove a point, that we’re a better team than Down. We really need get our own back. In that way, it could be a positive. You’d really want to see a good bounce back from Antrim, then use that to kick start a run right through the Joe McDonagh competition.

We’ve won it twice already and I see no reason we won’t win it again this year but we need the team to be just playing maybe a little bit more attacking and try and free up the talent we have.

On the flip of that too, Down now know they can beat Antrim. They played a brilliant game on Saturday night and you have to give them credit for it.

They pushed Antrim the whole way. That may just have installed belief and confidence that they can beat Antrim. If anything, it makes that first round of the Joe McDonagh even more interesting.