JOHNNY McINTOSH: A positive weekend

LAST weekend was a good one. I’m part of this year’s Antrim u-20 management team and we won the Ulster Championship, which was very important to us after falling short last season.

It was a really bad blow to Antrim hurling to lose that final, but there is a promising group of players coming through, a big squad of players, and a lot of our focus is bringing as many of them through as possible to turn them into potential senior hurlers.

A big problem within the GAA is that you have so many young fellas who look very talented but never go on to make it at senior level. The likes of Tipperary and Kilkenny can afford to bring through one or two u-20s through a year but in Antrim we do need to find another generation of player. Whether we like it or not, our senior squad is starting to age – there are quite a few boys creeping into their early thirties and they won’t be around forever. Our main priority is trying to ensure there is a group of lads coming through to eventually replace them. We’ve a couple of weeks now to get ready for Westmeath in the Leinster round-robin campaign, and as you win more you progress more up the ladder, so hopefully we’ll get our chance at a Leinster quarter-final and semi-final.

The Antrim seniors had a vitally important win over Laois which gives them a great chance of staying up. It’s still mathematically possible they go down – Laois have to win their last two to stay up, which is a big ask – they have Carlow and Dublin at home.

As for Antrim, it was the best performance by a mile under Davy. They were clinical and ruthless and had the game pretty much put to bed at half time, which was important because as the game wore on, Laois seemed to lose confidence altogether.

I have to give James McNaughton a shout out as well, he has been their star man all year and scored 2-11, he’s been exceptional.

I know we’d a few bad results but I didn’t sense that anyone was panicking, we knew we had winnable games coming up. The draw against Carlow helped and in the second half they came out and showed a lot of determination, grabbing a goal in the last puck of the game. The talk was that the team realised that they’re not as bad as people were saying they were.

Thankfully, they brought the same form into the Laois match and now have a good five or six weeks to get ready for the first round of the Leinster Championship. It’ll be a really difficult run for them – Offaly away, Galway, Kilkenny and Dublin. There’s a lot of really strong teams in their group but that’s where Antrim need and want to be. Fingers crossed we’ve done enough to stay up in Division 1B and hopefully we can regroup and everyone will be fit for the championship.

Meanwhile, it’d be remiss not to mention the fantastic achievement of the Down hurlers, who achieved promotion to Division 1B. They have done extremely well to come out of Division Two and I was surprised to read that it’s been 15 years since they’ve been in Division One.

It’s going to be tough, it’s a massive step up, and it begs the question should there be more of a safety net for teams with two teams getting relegated. The likes of Westmeath tend to yo-yo up and down and that makes it very hard to develop.

Next year Down will likely be playing teams like Wexford and Clare and it’ll probably be two up and two down again. I think it should be changed to allow teams to get accustomed to playing at the highest levels as there is a significant gap between the divisions.

Down manager Ronan Sheehan deserves a lot of credit for what they’ve achieved. He’s obviously done a great amount of work and was also managing their u-20s/u-21s for years as well. It also shows you how committed he is to developing the whole squad.

I’m delighted to see it because it’s good for Ulster hurling – the fact we have two teams hopefully in Division 1B and what a game it will be when Down cross paths with Antrim next year. It’d be a great occasion and there’d be a lot on the line as the loser would likely be staring relegation in the face.

To have two Ulster teams back up in Division One is a good stepping stone and it’s like anything – Down’s big job going forward is to try and push on. If they survive one season in Division 1B, they can look to try to push on to the next level. It’s not that long ago Offaly lost a Christy Ring final and really were struggling, but they’ve had brilliant u-20 teams. Next year they’ll be up in Division 1A so it shows how possible it is for teams to move through the ranks in a two or three-year period with the right commitment and the right players.