Messages

A brighter weekend for the Saffrons with good wins in all 4 codes.Hopefully this lifts the mood in the camp going forward as the footballers confidence must have been low.

Anyone know why Corrigan has only been available today for the county. I watched the hurling today expecting to see some sort of upgrade to the pitch or surrounding facilities,but it was the same old place.
Pitch didn't look in good shape either if it was the intention to rest it.

Have Aldergrove any ambitions to improve that facility or look for a new site?
If you ever needed an understudy of the problems within our county surly an area like Crumlin is a good starting point.
Massive potential in that town but from the outside looking in they seem to be massively under achieving.
Modern facilities would be a good starting point ,not trying to take away from anybody trying within the club either BTW.

Fair assessment.There are things going on behind the scenes regarding facilities. Funding being the usual stumbling block, as it is for most clubs. Some really great Gaels dedicating time and effort which can seem thankless at times. Again, same for most clubs. There's no doubting the pitch and facilities are not helping.

Whilst there is a growing population, many are only half an hour away from Belfast and take their kids to their own clubs which is understandable. Throw in the usual other issues such as competing with soccer, drink, drugs, exams, studying in GB it can be difficult to retain and/or progress players.

All that said, there is progress being made. Decent league campaign struggling a little since back end of the campaign. Team has a few excellent players, but in contrast to other Division 1 teams just not enough. The step up to Division 1 is huge.

Knowing some local gaels in the area, they say that the club maybe finalising an agreement with the church and its housing developer, however that may be a double edged sword in relation to what type of housing is planned as they have indicated that recent small developments have brought issues to the area, and how the wider community embrace those plans.

Getting more buy in from their huge primary school! Apparently the principal is a big soccer man etc. A few local men have told me there is little to no football in their primary school.

If there's no buy in from the primary school that's the first problem that needs fixed.

Have Aldergrove any ambitions to improve that facility or look for a new site?
If you ever needed an understudy of the problems within our county surly an area like Crumlin is a good starting point.
Massive potential in that town but from the outside looking in they seem to be massively under achieving.
Modern facilities would be a good starting point ,not trying to take away from anybody trying within the club either BTW.

Last year our lads virtually went knocking doors to get a team gathered up to play the league final and the Ulster select celebrated their victory like they had won the championship.

Now Bidies can't/wont field a team!

Surely if any team in the county could always get a team it's the club with the select of Ulster!

Any cargin players today ?
Their boycott doesn't help

Which players are boycotting?
For me it looks like the county is boycotting Cargin! Creggan also!
If you were a betting person who would you put your money on a creggan&cargin select v rest of Antrim?
I know were my money would be😜

The reality is this is where Antrim football is at and we are going to be in or around division 4 for a long time going by our underage results, nothing is changing for the foreseeable future.
Only when we get to the crux of our problems and do something to actually address the issues which some have already been highlighting on this board over the past few weeks.
I've always thought the grading system is a massive problem within the county with no grading until U16.
There is to many one sided games at underage  which help neither teams and also the retention of underage players.If the other sports that we are competing against can get this right why can't the GAA.
And now we have a senior league that isn't properly graded either....
We need to be playing competitive games regularly within the county to be able  to be competitive outside it.
We all realise the standards of coaching is well below our neighbouring counties and the what we are sending to the development squads is simply not coached to the correct standard for the development coaches to nurture.
The GAA culture that is needed for our games to thrive is missing in large areas of our county ,just look at the numbers that go to watch our games ,club or county and the large Villages/towns who struggle to get numbers for teams when in areas of Derry or Tyrone the same size of area can sustain 2-3 clubs.
We have lots of problems but we will just keep doing the same and we will actually get worse cause the enthusiasm will drain and drain.
Negative I know ,but it's hard to find or see anything to be positive around Antrim football ATM.

Start at the bottom and rebuild, there's no division 5!

Ridiculous result - what went on there?

The move from 12 to 16 teams last year brought 4 teams out of Division 2 that would possibly have stopped St Paul's seeing division 1 this year.

But even allowing for that, new rules, county players and all other early season caveats there is still something off there.

8 teams per division is where Antrim needs to go IMO.
We have many many problems with our games in Antrim but right from u8 up we seem to get the grading issue wrong.
If a team is playing in a one sided game they'd be better of training instead.

This 16 team division one is a complete farce! We shouldn't be seeing results like this from teams in the "same division"
Creggan 6-25
St Paul's 0-01

And I think there could be plenty more results like this with the stronger clubs out early this year with lots of challenge games already under their belt getting used to the new rules.

Is this the start of the annual 'Cargin - everyone's against us' waffle?

NO it's not (from me anyway)
But if a team that has/is so dominant on the club scene in a county has so few representatives on the county team surely people have to question why.
Possibly there is lads being asked and don't want to go up to the County as MR2 has said "club is king".
Other strong clubs low on representation too PG1 and Kickhams should have more IMO.

Eunan Quinn is on the subs CB
But it's hard to understand how the team that has dominated Antrim football the last decade has so few representatives on the County team.

I would be of the opinion that surely the leagues will need changed....
As it was stated in a previous post almost half the teams are playing senior football and our club standard is pretty poor also.
Can't see it happening but 8-10 team division one same division 2 and 3 with a junior B division 4 is what I would like to see.
2 up and down each year ,one through league and one through championship.
Pipe dream maybe!

Even if the championship was a 12 ahoghill would be in it. We couldn't really do eight teams - too small. (Yes hurling does but too small). Cargin being very far ahead a big enough factor here too.

Not sure if it would be to small to have 8 team championship.
2 groups of 4 ,top 2 go into semis,
Bottom 2 play off for league relegation.Lossing team could play bottom of league in a league play off for relegation (or 2nd bottom if it's the same team) 1 up 1 down each year.
No group game would be meaningless with this format.league would also be more competitive, home and away 14 games.Maybe allow second half of league to be played after county is finished so all players available.

This would be a proper championship also meaning we send our 9th placed team into Ulster not our 17th placed team.

There is also an argument to allow the reserve teams to play in the leagues making their games more competitive and meaningful possibly even in championship too.

Radical or constructive?

A small 21 point victory 

No one will get near cargin this year.

In fairness and all due respect to Ahoghill who are a brilliant club, but they aren't a senior footballing team.
The fact that they ended up in the last 8 just highlights the problem with having 16 teams playing senior championship in Antrim.
It would be hard to get 8 proper senior teams but we've ended up with 16!
Ahoghill in over their heads tonight with Cargin in 2nd gear.
The rest of this weekends game will be more even but it's wallpapering over cracks ,I think anyway.

Derry 5.16
Antrim 0.03
Look I don't have the answers but the country is laughing at us at this stage.How have we got even worse?
Fair play to the lads showing up and playing for our county but we really need help from somewhere at this stage cause this isn't fair on them .It really doesn't look good for the future,we really seem to be at rock bottom.