2 weeks Ago
THOSE THAT MAKE the decisions around where the TG4 wagons point towards on a Sunday could have kept it very local this weekend. They could have stayed within their Waterford environs to see how the Deise respond to last week’s defeat to Carlow with Laois coming to Walsh Park. But then, there was a pull towards Tullamore, and Glenisk O’Connor Park where Offaly host Antrim.
TG4 have done well out of Offaly hurling stories over the past few years and their progress at U20s level has brightened up those days of early summer to no end. They have the hurling chops on the management too with Johnny Kelly and his backstory as an avant-garde coach of Portumna in the early days of Joe Canning’s emergence. His backroom is Tipp-heavy with Brendan Maher as performance coach and his brother Martin Maher there.
What could be better than that amount of Tipp-ness? Why, the answer is surely even more Tipperary. And that arrived in November with Seamus Callanan joining up to become forwards coach. Who better to have your Adam Screeneys and your Dan Bourkes looking up to, but handing them over to a former Hurler of the Year and scorer of no fewer than 40 championship goals? But there’s also the attraction of Antrim.
Managed by, well, Davy Fitzgerald. Ah! The feeling of a penny dropping. When those in Antrim went after Davy to take the senior team, they were well aware that more spotlight was going to be shone in their direction.
Well, here it is. There’s also the potential plunge into nostalgia, a chance to revisit 1989 and all that. When Antrim won that All-Ireland semi-final they received one of the truly beautiful examples of sportsmanship when the Offaly players formed a guard of honour towards the tunnel towards the dressing room and clapped the Antrim players off the pitch.
In recent times, Antrim have actually held the edge in this rivalry. They beat Offaly in the 2022 relegation play-off 2-24 to 2-17. A few weeks later, their pips squeaked as they made it through a Corrigan Park battle, winning by the minimum, 3-22 to 2-24 in the first round of the Joe McDonagh Cup.
But a lot can change in a short time. Offaly hurling is fresh and vibrant and alluring and all those good things. It’s impossible to think of another county that have the same levels of optimism for the future, taking into account where they are coming from.
There might only have been two games played by some of the counties, but division 1B already has the appearance of a dogfight. Offaly sit astride the top, with an opening day draw against Carlow before handing Laois a nine-point defeat in Portlaoise last weekend. Antrim began life under Davy Fitz with a 14-point defeat to Dublin.
Fitzgerald himself had been up in the stands for the first game, a touchline ban the legacy of his protests last summer when Clare were awarded the 65 that Mark Rogers converted to beat his then-Waterford team on a boiling day in Ennis. Antrim straightened themselves up somewhat with a nine-point win over Westmeath last Sunday in Corrigan Park. In the post-match dusting-off, Fitzgerald made some pointed remarks to the reporters present.
“Today, it was nine points but it could have been a lot more – a 20-point win in my opinion. We played well but we’ve lots of work to do – it’s going to be up and down,” he said. “I’ve been accused of trying to play a game of taking the pressure off, but I know where we are and what we have to do.
You can see flashes of what we’ve been working on and that’s only going to get better.” While the second game was a marked difference from the first, few long-term observers of Davy Fitz would expect a team to not have a significant body of work already completed. Consider that the Antrim county final was played on 20 October.
It had been well signposted that Storm Ashley was coming in and was going to make life miserable for a day. So naturally, Antrim fixed the final for Ballycastle, a venue that cannot be more exposed to the elements and, by way of coincidence, the coastal Ruairí Óg Cushendall beat the inland Dunloy Cuchulainns. The Saturday after, the Antrim panel met with the new management, back at Ballycastle.
Everybody was there. The work began there and then. As soon as the club championships ended for players, there was individual work going on.
Players were forming pods in the own clubs and doing their running programmes. The target for some was that they had to complete 200 kilometres before Christmas. With rough accounting, for some that was amounting to three 9k runs a week.
Some found that a bit taxing on their ‘down’ days so have broken it into an extra running session each week. One player finished his quota of running on Christmas morning. Two weeks out from the start of the league, they took a trip down to Munster.
They played a Limerick selection on a Friday night which was a long way from their first-team. On Saturday morning, they put in a full pitch session and were let off to do their own thing for a Saturday evening. They chose pints, as any sensible group of young men marooned in Clare for a weekend might do.
Naturally they had a spell of go-karting and dinner to take the bad look off it, but it ended up a cheerful night, even with the prospect of a final pore-opener awaiting them on the Sunday morning with an 11k run around Cratloe Forest, not far away from where they were billeted. From 16 November, once Slaughtneil beat Cushendall in that winter classic, all the players have been available and invested. But nothing is ever going to be perfect.
Ciaran Clarke, an elusive and deadly finisher, has opted out this year. Another accurate freetaker in Conal ‘Coby’ Cunning underwent surgery for a cruciate ligament injury in December. Others, such as Joe Maskey, Ryan McCambridge and Eoin O’Neill have returned.
Gerard Walsh had spent a few weeks in Japan and is now back, playing some of the Dublin game and all of the Westmeath win. The Dublin game also featured the return of Dunloy’s Keelan Molloy, Seaan Elliot also made an appearance in the second half, while Conor Johnston showed up well against Westmeath. James McNaughton has started off the league like a train, while they are being careful with Joe McLaughlin’s gametime, their young wispy talent who has had a busy last two years across several teams.
The backroom team has a great flavour of progressive Antrim; Neil McManus operating as performance coach while the hugely-qualified Arron Graffin has long been wanting to get his teeth into a proper coaching role while his experience is still relevant and he has that boundless enthusiasm and energy. Alongside them, they have Paudie Shivers who had been recently in charge of the county U20s and has a handle on the potential coming through. But the best laid plans can’t help with everything.
On the weekend of Storm Éowyn, Antrim opened with that defeat to Dublin. Afterwards, they were booked in to use the pool at the Regency Hotel and, after a transport mix-up, they had to take a variety of means to return home with some not reaching their homes until 2am. The reality of their location occasionally bites them hard.
Even Fitzgerald, who has had a long association with Dunloy and has been up there coaching on and off for the best part of two decades, still finds it a surprise when he considers the vast area north of Belfast where the bulk of the hurlers reside. Like Justin McCarthy who coached Antrim to an All-Ireland intermediate title 54 years ago, he has eschewed paying lip service. He is taking his admiration for their club scene and doing something about it.
In an interview with the BBC shortly after he got going, he described how he was talked into the role by Seamus McMullan. “Their club scene, I actually love. I think the club scene in Antrim is really good.
I’m hoping that I can bring that to the county level. Can’t promise, but that’s what I am hoping and that’s what I am excited about.” Now he marries that potential and excitement.
Starting Sunday..
