Antrim Football Thread

[Milltown Row2]

We are living in tough economic times lads, and sometimes you have to prioritise what you do with your wages!

Gone are the days when you can blindly follow your county footballers and hurlers all around the country. In our house there are four adult memberships, and three juvenile ones too. Thats a lot of football boots, gear, not to mention training fees, the proper meals and drinks. The club lotto must be supportedtoo. As well as a club direct debit scheme.

And even if you have sons/daughters playing you still pay into club matches.

The large club functions throughout the year (5 or 6 on average) must be supported too. On average allow £100 a night for tickets/socialising/taxis etc.

There are offspring playing on the club senior, reserve, minor, u-16 and one playing camogie too. You would want to get to most of these matches to offer parental support. Half of these are away fixtures - throw in £25 or £30 for fuel.

And maybe you turned down the chance to manage a couple of other club teams (at decent money) - just so that you can put a bit back into your own club, by taking your own club team. (Reserves in this case).

And then you would still like to get to as many county matches as possible too - but guess what - the budget is well and truly hammered!

So what used to be every match, wherever/whenever, its a case now of sitting back and picking one or two off, now and again.

The club must come first folks or we can forget about the whole thing!!

+1 Bannside

[theskull1]

Absolutelty +1

But for every one of those Gaels...there are 10 or 20 fly by nights who like to talk about the great gaels they are but simply hang around waiting to snipe when they read the irish news report or jump on the bandwagon when theres signs of progress. We have more of those than is healthy

[bannside]

100% Skull. For the size of our county, in sheer terms of potential gaels, and the number of clubs involved, we are without doubt the worst supported county in the whole country.

But we have more experts and know alls than any other too. A mixed up bunch alright!

Funny enough, what Loughgiel did at the weekend, and St Galls a year or two back, shows that with the right hunger, training and organisation, that we have enough quality to work with. Hard to put your finger on the cause of decades of underachievement at county level.

Could Pat Gilroy turn us around if he did exactly the same with us as the way he rejuvenated Dublin. Or would he get us a lot further up the rankings? Is it a management thing? Is it finance? Are our players not good enough-period!

[AQMP]

Antrim team to play Wexford on Sunday 25th (12:45pm!)

1.  Chris Kerr (St. Gall's)

2.  Kevin O'Boyle (Cargin)
3.  Ricky Johnston (Creggan)
4.  Marty Johnston (Creggan)

5.  Tony Scullion (Cargin)
6.  Justin Crozier (Cargin)
7.  James Loughery (St. Brigid's)

8.  Michael McCann (Cargin)
9.  Aodhan Gallagher (St. Gall's)

10.  Tomas McCann (Cargin)
11.  Conal Kelly (St. John's)
12.  Michael Armstrong (O'Donovan Rossa)

13.  Michael Magill (Randalstown)
14.  Mark Sweeney (St Brigid's)
15.  Paddy Cunningham (Lamh Dhearg)

[glens abu]

Shocking performance from the Saffs today,def a fair few on show who are not county material.

[Gold]

Shocking performance from the Saffs today,def a fair few on show who are not county material.

Who?

Yeah, poor enough. Wexford were on a different level and hit 18 points to our 9--showing the difference between the 2 attacks

[glens abu]

Shocking performance from the Saffs today,def a fair few on show who are not county material.

Who?

Yeah, poor enough. Wexford were on a different level and hit 18 points to our 9--showing the difference between the 2 attacks

On todays showing Armstrong,Kelly ,and the fullback line,esp the two Johnstones also thought Aodhan Gallagher had the worst game I ever seen him play in an Aontroim jersey.Just my opinion. 

[Milltown Row2]

Did the sending off's not play a big part also in the defeat? I only got up for the last 20 minutes, was refereeing a kids game at the club.

[glens abu]

Not really although saying that even how bad we played we could have stolen it but they missed 3 good goal chances and had a lot of wides in the 2nd half.

[Gold]

Did the sending off's not play a big part also in the defeat? I only got up for the last 20 minutes, was refereeing a kids game at the club.

Yeah we are a handful of players short of being decent.

Wexford could have mauled us MR2. They scored at will and missed goal chances galore. They had 5 forwards who'd be near household names whereas we dont.

They kicked 18 points whereas we kicked 9 (and we didnt kick many wides, certainly less than wex did).

We one 1 clean catch at midfield (actually was aidso halfway through 2nd half). Our midfield is really too small to be inter-county standard. Each week we're playing v much taller and wider midfield pairings. The boys battle hard but the physical disadvatage there will usually work against us.

Half forward line was non-existent for long periods and Tomas didnt have his usual good game. Feel Loughrey would add more here as again he's the only one to break through and past a tackle at pace and when he's further forward goal and point chances open up. In ideal world Sean Kelly at wing back would let Loughrey free and perhaps McClean at CHB would help matters. As would Terry O'Neill at wing forward. Decky O'Hagan played v well in first 3 games and then got gassed--safe on ball and cant understand why he got dropped.

Magill played well and brought us back in it when we should have been dead and buried with his goal that was well worked through Loughrey then Scullion's pace.

Bam came on and scored a point but was then sent off just after our goal when there was only 2 in it with minutes left. Loughrey gave a ball up the left to Magill, flew on looking for a return, Magill's handpass over the forward was not far enough to be in his path (and possibly in on goal) forcing Lockrey to slow and turn back to collect the ball. He then shot under pressure straight up in the air and Bam jumped too early for the catch. The defender caught the ball but fell over --Bam appeared to jump with 2 knees into his back for no reason. Straight red. Game over. From the free Wexfords 2 pass move was put to an end by the TS Express who buried one of their half forwards with what looked (nearly) like a fair shoulder. 2 yellows meant red--2nd red in 60 seconds. Wex scored the free and a couple more straight after.

The game was in 6 mins of injury time when we got a penalty for a pull on McDonagh (who tried to shoot when he should have passed for an easy goal). Mick McCann buried the penalty to put 2 in it with a min to go. Wex scored immediately.

We then attacked and got a 45 that was kicked in but Wexford won it and time was up

We should have lost by more than 3 but then but for stupidity and red cards we may have snatched something from the game as Wexford froze a bit at the end.

Ciaran Lyng is direct and dangerous. PJ Banville is a good ball winner. Red Barry and Colm Morris are steady safe forwards who chip in with scores whilst Ben Brosnan can hit a free and buy a free. They couldnt handle our pace however on the rare occassions we used it.

[imtommygunn]

Today's showing was really disappointing. It wasn't the fact that we got beat - it was the lack of pressure wexford players got put on them from back to front and also the fact that we only played with any urgency in really really short bursts. For the most part it resembled a challenge game.

I don't know what kind of system we are trying to play or if we are trying to play a system. Really between losing short kickouts, stray men in half back and midfield all over the place it was very hard to know where to start on what was going wrong.

Good to see Magill working as a target man and good to see Michael McCann back playing well again. That's about all positive can be said about today's game. Wexford I thought were poor enough - a lot of these marquee forwards took too much out of the ball and were wasteful.

We have to be better than what we showed today - have to be. There are some decent individuals there but I don't know what is going on with tactics and motivation didn't look too good either.

[Gold]

Today's showing was really disappointing. It wasn't the fact that we got beat - it was the lack of pressure wexford players got put on them from back to front and also the fact that we only played with any urgency in really really short bursts. For the most part it resembled a challenge game.

I don't know what kind of system we are trying to play or if we are trying to play a system. Really between losing short kickouts, stray men in half back and midfield all over the place it was very hard to know where to start on what was going wrong.

Good to see Magill working as a target man and good to see Michael McCann back playing well again. That's about all positive can be said about today's game. Wexford I thought were poor enough - a lot of these marquee forwards took too much out of the ball and were wasteful.
We have to be better than what we showed today - have to be. There are some decent individuals there but I don't know what is going on with tactics and motivation didn't look too good either.

True. And they missed 3 cast iron certainty goal chances.

But they still kicked 0-18.

Have we ever done that?

[imtommygunn]

Against Kilkenny...

Wexford have good forwards no doubt however the lack of pressure applied to them was more of an issue than their quality. 

That was one of the most disheartening games I have ever seen as an antrim fan to be honest.

[bannside]

I was scared we were too far forward for February!!! Maybe a good job we were though or perhaps we would be looking at relegation at this stage. Dont think we should start playing the blame game though.

According to my feedback the vibes were good. The backroom team was well freshed up. The training session I went to see myself was good quality. The panel was freshened up too. So for that reason I wont be getting on Bakers back. But he must be wondering why he allowed a decent tenure to become one that now will certainly be reviewed with mixed feelings.

Hopefully there is one more kick in this team this year - just one mighty performance to go with some of the 2009 memories.

When the players cross that line they have to produce, and once again too many are struggling to find their proper form.

[subterranean saffron]

I don't think there is any real mystery where the problem is. Last three games points scored = 9, 6, 8. Our forwards go for goal far too often and now teams are so well drilled not to give away frees that Hands becomes redundant. Niblock gave us a real impetous when he was at 11 and there is no one to replace him. I think we should pull Loughery into the forward line also, though I guarantee it will impact our scores against. IMHO if our footballers are to achieve anything this year Baker needs to to call up and then figure out how to tame/get the best out of CJ. Say what you want about him but he has confidence and talent unlike anyone else on the panel. I'm sure that suggestion will get a warm response