Antrim must find the key to the consistency door

Antrim are under the management of Mark Doran and will be taking aim at a promotion bid. Michael McMullan takes a look at their main focus…

HOW do you build a house? Lay the foundations. Then lay one brick at a time. Keep on laying, add the mortar, then keep on laying. Hours pass and progress is evident.

The secret words here are ‘keep’ and ‘on’. That’s the consistency everyone, in every walk of life, is craving.

It’s the same in sport. In a league of eight teams, where each play seven games and only two get promoted, consistency isn’t just important. Consistency is everything.

That’s where Antrim find themselves with Carlow coming to visit later this month. Relegation dropped them into the foundations last year.

Division Four is the building site. Mark Doran is the foreman. His phone calls to the region of 90 players and the formation of a management team, that’s the planning. Two McKenna Cup games tell him what he has and where the holes are.

Collectively, they’ve got to find the blocks and get to work. Watching Antrim over the last few seasons has been looking at a series of ups and downs.

A win followed by a loss. Maybe even a couple of losses. Their championship offering against Armagh last year didn’t point to a team just relegated to Division Four. They gave plenty before the All-Ireland champions pulled away.

In a recent league campaign, Antrim played Fermanagh and Down but found themselves losing games they appeared to have two hands on.

They had more chances than Offaly one Sunday in Corrigan Park but ended up losing. Then, when Cavan rocked up, Antrim played them off the pitch.

That has been the problem. There has been good and bad.

Antrim will have to build their promotion bid without two of their key players. Goalkeeper Michael Byrne has stepped away. One of the best ‘keepers in the game.

Captain Dermot McAleese retired last year. A heartbeat player, always in the thick of it. The Saffron door remains ajar for both but the show will move on for now. Starting with Carlow.

“At the end of the day, our be-all and end-all is Division Four,” Doran told Gaelic Life.

“The only thing is, there are seven other teams thinking exactly the same. The whole idea of the McKenna Cup was getting game time into legs, trying to get people up to speed.”

Goalkeeper John McNabb has come into the panel with excellent club form with Cargin behind him. The two-point score he kicked before half-time in Owenbeg last week shows he can offer more than just being a goalkeeper.

Wing back Gerard O’Neill, a former Stewartstown player now with St Gall’s, looked like a useful addition with his use of the ball and game sense.

Scratch the surface on their first outing, a 2-16 to 0-7 defeat at the hands of Derry and there are both nuggets of value and issues to solve.

Ciarán Meenagh was just short the rested Shane McGuigan, Conor Glass and Brendan Rogers from the championship regulars available.

Antrim were compact in the first half and while Derry used their kick-out well, the yellow bodies had a structure that closed out any overlaps for goal chances.

There were a selection of Antrim debutants tasting the inter-county footballing world for the first time.

The flashing red light on the dashboard came from not scoring for the entire second half. That can’t be dressed up any better.

“We wouldn’t be happy with the last 20 minutes,” Doran said in his first post-game interview as an inter-county manager.

“We wouldn’t be happy not scoring in the second half because we do spend a lot of our training shooting and that maybe 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.”

On a deeper dig of the second half, in the third quarter Derry and Antrim both had four shots. Derry converted half. Antrim converted none. When star man Ethan Doherty made a goal for Paul Cassidy, that was the end of Antrim’s hopes of victory.

“The game probably got stretched,” Doran said. “We were going up the field and probably getting the ball turned over. We had bodies up and we probably just looked in the last 15 minutes like we hadn’t the energy we had in the first half.

“We weren’t getting back as quick; we weren’t getting the D closed as quick. Then sometimes when you do run the bench, people don’t know their roles.

“We didn’t get the middle closed as quick as we could. For the first goal anyway, our middle was wide open. The second goal was just a mistake, it happens. But look we’ll hopefully learn from that and try and move on.”

Antrim won’t play Derry or Donegal in the league. Division Four is the level they are planning to play themselves up from. It’s still going to be a minefield.

Carlow first. A trip to Tipp. Home to Longford then away to Leitrim. Eight points up for grabs. Four games of championship importance.

Patrick McBride, Ryan McQuillan and Dominic McEnhill have scores in them. Tomás McCann has stepped back into the fold after another impressive season with Cargin.

Marc Jordan is both a leader and a baller. Sean O’Neill is another from Cargin who has showed well in club action.

Peter Healy has returned after an excellent season Leinster champions Ballyboden St Enda’s. Another leader but looks like missing a chunk of the league with injury.

So much of Antrim’s season will be defined by energy. New management teams always bring a bounce.

Getting the fans behind them is another part but aside from the diehards in any county, most fans only follow success. And for success, you need backing.

If Antrim can get off to a winning start, they can stand back and look at the first row of blocks. It will give them something to take to Thurles. If they can return from Thurles with another victory, then anything is possible.

Then, it will be up to the Antrim Gaels to back them. The energy will flow. Mark Doran, the players and the management team would tear anyone’s arm off right now for four points from four. That’s the consistency factor but it will be the same in the Carlow and Tipperary bubbles.

Eight teams league are hard, hard work. There is no secret. Work. Evaluate. Put one foot in front of the other. Work again. Welcome to the world of finding consistency.

NFL TARGET

ANTRIM have been targeting their home Carlow opener since the fixture computer spat out a potential promotion path. Can they get promoted? They are certainly in the shake up. Mark Doran and the players know the landscape very well. Finding consistency is their number one focus.

SFC TARGET

ANTRIM face a tough ask against Derry in Ulster, not helped with being away in Celtic Park. Unless there is a shock, they will have to eye a championship adventure in the Tailteann Cup. They’ve had a couple of progressive runs and they can target Croke Park again.