Antrim Football Thread

[Dunsilly King]

A great result for Dunloy. A great club. Shows clearly that the dual club status works well, if managed properly. 
Helps also that you have good footballers (and hurlers). A great squad with new talent coming through every year. No doubt that they'll be at the top end in Antrim football for a few years yet.


That's another disappointing year for PG1 and their flagship team. Year after year, seems to be the same old story.

What are the issues? Have they regressed this past year or two? Have they not a 'big name' management ticket? Players just not there?

Their management team
John McKeever
Padraig Hampsey
Conleth Gilligan
Emmett Bradley

[bannside]

Haven't posted here for a bit but fair play to Dunloy, they were hungry, sharp and well coached. Got their shooters on the end of their moves, and compared to Portglenone had little or no wastage.

Casements looked flat for some reason, tried hard but couldn't find a way through a well drilled Dunloy defence.

No excuses from us, better team won on the night when it mattered.

Dunloy have half a dozen players would not be out of place playing at county level and will be a worthy and dangerous opponent for the winners of Cargin and Creggan. Carry a hunger that will be hard to suppress...they are no longer under the radar, they've well and truly lost that tag.

Now the focus is on who their opponents will be.

[paddyjohn]

Be some sharpening of knives around the Wild Duck and Fiddlers rest this weekend.

Dunloy the better side last night. They'll cause either of the 2 Toome sides bother in the final.

[Take the Mark]

Haven't posted here for a bit but fair play to Dunloy, they were hungry, sharp and well coached. Got their shooters on the end of their moves, and compared to Portglenone had little or no wastage.

Casements looked flat for some reason, tried hard but couldn't find a way through a well drilled Dunloy defence.

No excuses from us, better team won on the night when it mattered.

Dunloy have half a dozen players would not be out of place playing at county level and will be a worthy and dangerous opponent for the winners of Cargin and Creggan. Carry a hunger that will be hard to suppress...they are no longer under the radar, they've well and truly lost that tag.

Now the focus is on who their opponents will be.

Gracious as per, Bannside. Reading your posts from earlier in the season and other posters referencing Casements I had an inkling all was not well. This has to be the case after watching that last night and the previous game. They were so far off the pace it was obvious.

[bannside]

Tbh I thought Casements were very flat against St Galls and were lucky to get through. That flatness continued last night, not sure why, I went there expecting to win the game, so Im not going to jump in now and say otherwise.

Cuchullians kicked on easily another 10% since they beat St Brigids in the QF, and the winners of tomorrow's semi will find themselves in a proper game in a fortnight.

Casements have to review what went wrong (without the knives) and see what is needed to go again. I've said many times theres plenty of talent coming through the club, in fact get should definitely get stronger....last night just another bump of many on a long hard road!

[SoloAndGo]

MG playing against 14 men again. That's 3 of their games this IFC. Not much between the teams until the sending off.

[Spike]

Do they even need it though?  The intermediate antrim championship is at its lowest quality in living memory.

It wouldn't be junior grade in other counties.  Some clubs need to be forced down into into whether they like it or not

[Gaels1789]

Do they even need it though?  The intermediate antrim championship is at its lowest quality in living memory.

It wouldn't be junior grade in other counties.  Some clubs need to be forced down into into whether they like it or not


Sairsfields and moneyglass are border line senior teams and the difference is massive to the rest of the league.

[Spike]

A 16 team first division means a lot of teams are borderline senior.

In any normal situation these teams would be nowhere near senior.   Thats not their fault, they can only compete against the teams within the built structures and beat whats in front of them.

Hard to watch some of those group games in the senior championship.

[general_lee]

I have a passing interest in Antrim football due to friends and family connections. Cannot for the world of me understand the thought process behind introducing the 16 team SFC/Division 1 (I'm guessing politics)

There are at best, 10 genuine senior standard clubs. You could maybe argue extending that to 12, same for intermediate. The rest are junior and even at that level you would need to introduce a Junior B.

[imtommygunn]

Where did the stream go??

[NorthAntrimSaff]

I have a passing interest in Antrim football due to friends and family connections. Cannot for the world of me understand the thought process behind introducing the 16 team SFC/Division 1 (I'm guessing politics)

There are at best, 10 genuine senior standard clubs. You could maybe argue extending that to 12, same for intermediate. The rest are junior and even at that level you would need to introduce a Junior B.

Junior B in football 100%..some junior teams are miles off winning junior plus more would enter if there were a junior b. I see Mitchell's are still operating in the south antrim leagues. Fair play to them. Would be good to see them build and get back into the all county league. Which is in fact all belfast apart from rasharkin next year? Although rasharkin and gorts will be very very strong compared to bottom end division 3 teams

[SoloAndGo]

Completely agree, IFC is brutal but so are SARS and MG. League structure needs change asap.

[NorthAntrimSaff]

If you had six teams from div 1 plus moneyglass sarsfields Glenavy and st ts would be a good intermediate championship

[NorthAntrimSaff]

Im not sure how a junior would work. Possibly a similar set up in other counties like derry shc. All the rest start junior A. Grading rounds. Drop to junior B or something like that