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A hell of a lot of creggan guys on that team (well squad) from magherafelt who made it to macrory tonight which is good to see.

Quinn and small looked like big talents from what i saw last year.

Are they minor again?

Three from Moneyglass as well, two starters and one on the bench. Hopefully bodes well for Antrim football in the long run.

Liam Quinn still minor but Small is overage

Probably not, but they have nothing to gain from an intermediate campaign that they are not guaranteed to win, I can see the logic in their decision.

Yeah though if I am correct Antrim have been in 2 of the last 3/4 Junior Finals so would maybe have been good to take that step first but yeah ballsy all the same.  Plus I do not think anyone would have batted an eyelid had they been playing Div 2 but entered in the Junior.  Likewise surprised that Glenavy opted for the Senior Championship as they will be nowhere near it and again would have good grounds to be playing Intermediate.

I genuinely mean no disrespect to Glenravel though I appreciate that is exactly how it sounds but Ballymena held their own against St Johns for long periods in the senior championship last season whereas Glenravel will be warming up with games against Mitchells, Eire Og, Lisburn etc (again no disrespect meant).  I honestly cannot see how this will be anything other than a comfortable victory for Ballymena.

Is there not a bye law of possibly just an unwritten rule that if you win the junior or intermediate championship you play the next grade up the following year, as current junior champions Glenravel would fall into this bracket.

As for Glenavy they should have beat Portglenone in the championship last year but for losing Paddy Gallagher to injury and  bit of naivety in letting Portglenone march up the field in added time to score a goal they would have been through so I can see why they would want another crack at the SFC, also they have won the IFC in the recent past so it possibly doesn't give them the same motivation as a run or scalp in the SFC.

Antrim are a different prospect whilst coming up short in a few junior finals would drive some teams to continuing competing at that  level until the win it outright, they have shown that they obviously have ambition above that and want to progress further and I think should be commended for that decision.

With our current league structure its perfectly set up to move in line with our championship i.e Div 1/SFC, Div 2/IFC, Div 3/JFC which would do away with any objections or confusion as to who should be playing where.

We do have the players to compete (mostly not on the current panel) but to be successful in terms of winning ulsters we are miles away and id agree that we need coaches who are of certain standard (i do not currently know any half decent coaches currently involved in the underage set up but i am open to correction) it seems to be someones da/mate who takes them.i know pd does a lot of good work and needs help.Two st galls lad made an attempt to b minor managers last year are they involved in coaching any development team .top players ex county players and top coaches have plenty to offer are these people involved or even approached.
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Are you aware of all the coaches working with these groups? From what I can see there are some  good coaches working at trying to improve standards of our developmental groups. Also in your view what constitutes a half decent coach?

it was on the county web page as a Friday night in ahoghill at one point. def was as it was down as a double header with the minor B final, fri 23rd sept, which was roughly a month between the semi final and final.

the semi final was the 23rd of August, 8 weeks ag0. Its not acceptable for either club imo.

If the match had been scheduled for 23rd sept initially, you can understand why the clubs involved may feel aggrieved that it still hasn't been played, especially when you look at the semi final date.

Am I not right in saying the reason the game wasn't played on the 23rd was due to Dunloy being in the intermediate football final the next day and the minor hurling final on the Sunday? To play it before the senior final seemed like a sensible solution. I can sympathize with the powers that be slightly over the weekends events as when the decision was made it was bucketing down, imagine the uproar if the minor match had went ahead and rendered the pitch unplayable for the senior game.

[One last note you could hear cargin men moaning that the ref gave some soft calls to st galls. The bigger teams in general do get those calls but he also gave 3 penalties against the lamhs in last years final. Thoughts?]

St galls experience told in the end. Must say im at odds with the notion of 14 men behind the ball win the Lamhs hit 10 wides in the first half. Lamhs need to make sure they dont waste the opportunity to win one. But the last 2 years they have been handcuffed. Last year they lost Michael Hynes to study, Ryan Stranney, Declan Stranney and Terry Mccrudden to operations whilst Paddy Cunningham and Ryan Murray played whilst injured as did Declan Lynch who got a double hip operation shortly after. On wednesday they were missing Paddy Cunningham whilst Declan Stranney is suffering from complications to his surgery and Michael Hynes was unavailable as was Marc Jordan. Ryan Murray despite his efforts was also injured.It was Ryan Stranneys first game in 18 months So would judge them better when at full tilt as its hard to gauge where they are at. As for the final cargin need to make sure they get a good start and not let galls play the game on their terms. Also it must be noted that it was 2 of the unsong lads who turned the game. Brendan Bradley won three or four frees from running at lamhs whereas Mark Kelly won 4 break balls from kickouts at crucial times. One last note you could hear cargin men moaning that the ref gave some soft calls to st galls. The bigger teams in general do get those calls but he also gave 3 penalties against the lamhs in last years final. Thoughts?

On the refereeing and the Cargin men moaning, may it have been due to the fact they would have rather played Lamh Dhearg in the final? Id disagree with the sentiments of the big teams getting the big calls, St Galls were screaming for a penalty in the first half that the referee waved away, if it was a case of big tems getting the calls surely he'd have given it. As for last year and giving three penalties if you give 2 penalties and another foul occurs in the square should you not give another penalty because you have already given two before?

Is that all senior league football completed in Antrim now?  Just championship left?

I think there are a couple of re fixtures this weekend but all the important stuff is wrapped up in terms of promtion/relegation and league winners.

I took a trip up to see the minors on Sunday night and with all the chat about this strong Donegal minor team I traveled more in hope than expectation and from basically the throw in Donegal charged through the middle hitting the cross bar and fortunately going over, at that stage it looked like the fears might have been right.

Antrim settled well into the game after that and had the majority of possession and were patient against the Donegal blanket, they missed/dropped short I think I'm right in saying 5 frees in the first half, the way Donegal were set up it was imperative these chance were taken.

Second half started very well for again dominating possession and young Fyfe getting in for the first goal at the time I thought he should have squared it but he finished it very well, the Donegal keeper then took what could only be described as a very strange kick out which landed at Fyfes feet he duly gathered it up and rattled the net again. 7 up with 12 minutes to go. At this stage I was convinced Antrim would win as they had been defending well. Donegal however never panicked and struck 2 goals in as many minutes to bring them back into the game and followed it with a few excellent points. The Antrim lads while they continued to battle manfully seemed rocked by the comeback and were unable to claw there way back.

Whilst it wasn't the changing of the game shortly after Donegal had a man sent off for what seemed to be an off the ball infringement, I felt the referee very harshly gave Paul Mulholland a black card whilst he possibly fouled it didn't look as if it warranted a black, this coupled with his previous yellow left Antrim down to 14 also, I think had they kept the full complement on the pitch Antrim would have see the game out.

Very disappointing result but some tremendous talent on show which certainly bodes well for the future, of the names Bannside mentioned Matthew Hamill came on as a sub on Sunday whilst the others weren't involved for reasons I don't know.  From chatting to a few people at the match it seems a number of players are available again next year and that allied along with a strong squad of under 16's this year certainly paints a good picture moving forward.

Minors as I said previously played well, as BS stated McCormick and Quinn both had great games, I was also impressed with Nagle and McCabe both very industrious and important to how Antrim played. Paul Mulholland at corner back had an excellent game as well.

Id imagine Eamon Fyfe will come in for Quinn for the quarter final, where would you see young Finnegan coming in at Brendan I dont know the lad at all other than what I seen when he came on?

Disappointing performance yesterday like a lot of our support yesterday I traveled with a genuine belief that we could get a result, although it has to be noted that I somewhat underestimated Fermanagh, they were extremely well organised in terms of their defensive structure and broke well from front to back.

In terms of Antrim i was slightly bemused by the kick out strategy or lack of it but in thinking I would imagine it was based around the ability of Niall McKeever to win clean ball around the middle and to late to work on anything else after his late withdrawal. In saying that John Carron battled manfully around the middle and got a hand to most kickouts, we did struggle with breaking ball however.

With Fermanaghs organised blanket defence we needed to come out of defence at break neck speed before they got organised but more often than not it was a laboured patient approach whilst not giving the ball away it made it very difficult to get into scoring positions. Dermott McAleese and Ryan Murray helped when then came on with a more direct style of play.

I was a little surprised that Antrim continued with a sweeper at the start of the second half when 7 down and thought they should definitely have went man to man sooner than they did, Fermanagh got at least 7 or 8 uncontested short kickouts at the start of the first half taking the pressure off their defence when we were starting to get the upper hand. Antrims best period in that game was certainly when they went 15 on 15, had bams goal chance gone in it would have made it very interesting, saying that Fermanagh were full value for the win.

Its easy sitting here on a Monday morning analyzing as well very different when your own the line in the middle of a championship game. Heres hoping for a good draw in the qualifiers and possibly a run.

Well done to the minors also few mistake which lead to scores but they are young lads overall a good performance with some great players on show.

Bannside when you see it down there in black and white its frightening how far behind we are in terms of preparation if even we could obtain half of the professionalism of other set ups to begin with we would surely improve.

Your comment that resonates most with me is in terms of the Derry management, as you rightly say 3 Derry 'legends', now I don't personally know the Antrim management team and am in no way trying to devalue their contribution but why is it that Ex Antrim players don't want to be or aren't asked to be involved with our teams. Gearoid as we are all aware is in with the Seniors and I know Sean Kelly and Terry O'Neill are in with the development squads but surely they are many more out there who's expertise we could be availing of? How do we get them interested and on board?

Sponsorship is massive as well, its takes alot of money to run successful county teams how to we make ourselves a more attractive sponsorship opportunity, if I was a successful businessman with a pot of cash ready to invest in sponsorship I would not be running to the county board with it as it is not a sensible investment right now, what with Casement and Dunsilly amongst other matters most press about Antrim GAA lately has been negative.

Whilst you are spot on about a Director of Football and a Football specific committee with the best will in the world these things will not happen without the proper resources and will again come down to money to implement proper structures.

On the current committee I think given time they will resolve alot of these issues and start to push us in the right direction again the main problem I see is that they are having to pool so many of their resources and experience into Casement etc that Football and Hurling at both senior and developmental stage are down the list of things to do.

On the playing side of things id commend Conall Delargy for being honest enough to withdraw as many would have tried to plod on to the detriment of themselves and the team. Ive seen Mackle play many times and is right up their with the best Under 21's in the county in my opinion. On the St Endas issue I dont know all the lads so cant comment on their indivdual abilities but it would be worrying if we are losing players to perceived favoritism within squads.

All in all another disappointing result that will no doubt just become another statistic next year, no Under 21 wins in 11 years

Id like the brutally honest one if its available, I was playing a challenge match last night for my club otherwise I would have attended as well, I have played at that level before and appreciate that support bar parents is often fleeting so try and get where possible.

From what I can see its seemed a relatively young team which could possibly bode well for the future, I'd also have thought looking through the substitutes that Conall Delargy and Padraig Mackle would have been worth there place both consistent performers for their respective club sides. Then again its possible they weren't going well at training or what not.

Anybody at the Under 21 match last night, seems like we mounted a spirited comeback but just left too much to do?

Niall McKeever Sean Burke, Jack Dowling, John Carron, Sean Mc Veigh and now Mick. That's midfield sorted!

Having watched Mick playing a less restricted role for Cargin this year, where by he was lined out at full forward and given what seemed like a free role in my opinion brought the best out in him. I'd like to see him play a similar role for Antrim where he can dictate the game higher up the pitch.

Tragic news coming from Glenavy tonight on the death of their Senior Football Manager Francie Doone. After the success last weekend to this, shows how tough life can be.

To his family, team & the Glenavy club I pass on my condolences.

RIP

+1

Very Sad News

Had played against Francie many times, tough and uncompromising but always fair.

A gentleman into the bargain as well.

RIP