Antrim Football Thread

[bannside]

Madden on Monday makes for good reading today. Insightful and on the money. Pulls no punches with the gross ineptitude of our "county board" who should be holding their heads in shame at this stage.

We managed two points from play in 70 minutes yesterday against a very poor Fermanagh team. And I paid £80 at the gate for two adults and two juveniles for that privilege.

The really frustrating thing about it all is that we have the players in Antrim to be competitive. All hands to the deck with good support structures and we are definitely 100% better than this.

[DennistheMenace]

Just watched the recording of Sunday game, why didn't CJ start? Definitely missing some physicality in the FF line. Antrim have good players missing as it's well documented. You'd love to see how well you'd fair for one season with everyone on board.

[Walter Cronc]

Why is O'Boyle missing BS?

[oakleafgael]

Madden on Monday makes for good reading today. Insightful and on the money. Pulls no punches with the gross ineptitude of our "county board" who should be holding their heads in shame at this stage.

We managed two points from play in 70 minutes yesterday against a very poor Fermanagh team. And I paid £80 at the gate for two adults and two juveniles for that privilege.

The really frustrating thing about it all is that we have the players in Antrim to be competitive. All hands to the deck with good support structures and we are definitely 100% better than this.

There you go again, have a bit more respect for the opposition. Fermanagh where promoted to Div 2 this year, on merit, but here you are running them down.

[Catch and Kick]

Very surprised to see Pollock taken off so early - and he looked dejected leaving the pitch. Also taking Owen Gallagher and Ryan Murray off meant three serious forwards were off the park. CJ had his radar switched on for the frees but other than that he had very little involvement. I thought Kieran McGourty showed very well. IMO Antrim have classy footballers but don't seem to have any belief.
Early on Antrim won all their own kick outs - great movement and availability for Chris Kerr to pick a man out. But that stopped. Don't know why!

Fermanagh get the most out of themselves.

[bannside]

Not disrespect at all OLG. They are a decent team but were poor enough yesterday and that's the concensus from the Fermanagh supporters O spoke to. They were poor enough yesterday up to last 10 minutes.  Good luck to them going forward.

[brendanbelfast]

Poor game, poor performance. A disappointing day for the most part when hopes had been quite high - in our car anyway.

At least we have the hurlers to look forward to. Oh, wait.......

[Pub Bore]

Madden on Monday makes for good reading today. Insightful and on the money. Pulls no punches with the gross ineptitude of our "county board" who should be holding their heads in shame at this stage.

We managed two points from play in 70 minutes yesterday against a very poor Fermanagh team. And I paid £80 at the gate for two adults and two juveniles for that privilege.

The really frustrating thing about it all is that we have the players in Antrim to be competitive. All hands to the deck with good support structures and we are definitely 100% better than this.

What did you Antrim stalwarts think of the set up of the team and the sideline decisions?  I would think if you're going to bring on McGourty after 20 mins, when he clearly wasn't 100%, you would want him to get the ball in hand.  The Antrim no 14 has more time on the ball in his 20 mins than CJ had in the next 50.  The no 12 (McBride?) was replaced at half time and i thought he was one of Antrim's better performers in the first half, maybe he was injured.  Again the full back Johnston was replaced and i thought he did quite well, maybe he was running out of steam.

A couple of small pluses for Antrim to take the edge off a low for them.  Dowling the no 19 fielded 3 or 4 balls he had no right to win and looks a player with potential, he has to stop fouling tho.  I actually thought the full back line did well.  Burke never put a foot wrong and Fermanagh's big full forward never got a look in.  Conor Murray did well running at Fermanagh in the 2nd half and drew 3 or 4 frees.  Antrim were slick enough moving it up the field but couldn't find free players inside the Fermanagh 45.  Finally as another poster said there are some good footballers in the minors, the midfielder Cormac Murray? was immense.

That was a poor Fermanagh team who really have to up their game to avoid a tanking against Monaghan.

[brendanbelfast]

Best thing about the day was the minor team. In speaking to Fermanagh folk at the game its clear that their minor setup is not good, and taking the team seems to be something of a poisoned chalice. But - our lads looked very strong, some standout individual performances. Hopefully the team captain - Conor Small - went off with cramp and nothing more serious. Be interesting to see how they get on against stronger opposition. The goal was terrific.

[Pub Bore]

Madden on Monday makes for good reading today. Insightful and on the money. Pulls no punches with the gross ineptitude of our "county board" who should be holding their heads in shame at this stage.

We managed two points from play in 70 minutes yesterday against a very poor Fermanagh team. And I paid £80 at the gate for two adults and two juveniles for that privilege.

The really frustrating thing about it all is that we have the players in Antrim to be competitive. All hands to the deck with good support structures and we are definitely 100% better than this.

There you go again, have a bit more respect for the opposition. Fermanagh where promoted to Div 2 this year, on merit, but here you are running them down.

To be fair to bannside, he's calling it as it is.  I was at the match.  First time I've seen Fermanagh live in a long while.  On that performance they're going to struggle in Div 2.  A lot of Duracell bunny stuff sideways but not huge quality.

[bannside]

Kobo out for most of the year with ankle injury WC and as far as I know he picked up another injury (maybe the same one) after that when coming good.

To be fair to Fitzy he did keep the door open, both publicly and privately,  to just about every quality player in the county ( though I think he may have been a bit hasty with Michael Magill) but I can't think of any others.

CJ hadn't trained for weeks with a bad hip injury so that's why he didn't start. Whilst he kept us in ir with some excellent frees, he was non existent in open play. Likewise Pollock was on the sick list with a hamstring tear which was obviously affecting him. I called for his substitution 5 mins before it happened. He wasn't at the races and squandered three or four half chances before being called in. That's too many at this level.

Paddy Mc Bride is a player I really do like but he was poor by his standards too. Likewise Gallagher. Missed or coughed up a few times when more assurance needed. We were depending on him winning his duel with Ryan Mc Cluskey but that wasn't happening.

Fitzy got all those calls spot on (in my book anyway).

[FermGael]

Fermanagh played the worst they have played all year.
We were poor.
We seemed happy to win by a few points.
Cosidering donnelly was not there and we lost mccluskey and r corrigan I was happy enough to come through it.
The Antrim tactic of playing k mcgourty out the field suited marty O'Brien. He was very destructive from open play.


Antrim were playing players who clearly had not trained.
Looked very unfit.
Conor Burke was excellent.

[FermGael]

Best thing about the day was the minor team. In speaking to Fermanagh folk at the game its clear that their minor setup is not good, and taking the team seems to be something of a poisoned chalice. But - our lads looked very strong, some standout individual performances. Hopefully the team captain - Conor Small - went off with cramp and nothing more serious. Be interesting to see how they get on against stronger opposition. The goal was terrific.

Our minor set up is not good and hasn't been for years
If it was not for the work that goes on in St Michael's we as a county would have nothing coming through.

[SaffronHeart]

I thought Kieran McGourty was outstanding on the ball, the problem was we were so defensive we had no ball winners or support for when the ffs did occasionally win the ball. Matthew Fitzpatrick (while unproven) leaving the panel for the states was a big loss as he is a serious ballwinner as shown for the Ranch and the Jonnies. I was disappointed with Gallagher he is better than that but was like a rabbit caught in headlights on several occasions. By my reckoning Antrim were missing about 12 players who would improve the panel but what can Russ do when they dont want to play. Its depressing stuff being an Antrim Follower, I firmly believe the talent is there especially with the football but there just doesn't seem to be the passion and pride that every other ulster county has in representing the jersey.

The red card affected the game however with antrims tactics even with 15 men I didnt see them getting the scores to win unless we got a fortuitous goal.

[Pub Bore]

Fermanagh played the worst they have played all year.
We were poor.
We seemed happy to win by a few points.
Cosidering donnelly was not there and we lost mccluskey and r corrigan I was happy enough to come through it.
The Antrim tactic of playing k mcgourty out the field suited marty O'Brien. He was very destructive from open play.


Antrim were playing players who clearly had not trained.
Looked very unfit.
Conor Burke was excellent.

Must be the fault that fitness coach from Fermanagh!  Expect to see fitness level perk up for the qualifiers