08 April 2011
Antrim are the guests of Antrim this Sunday in the final round game in this year’s Division 2 football campaign. It may sound fanciful to say that a team starved of the services of Michael McCann, CJ and Kevin McGourty, Andy McClean, Kevin Niblock and Justin Crozier are in better shape injury wise than this time last week but the Saffrons have been able to include Paddy Cunningham and Kevin O’Boyle in the starting line up.
A back to fitness Tomas McCann has had an impact in recent games and new comer Bam Neeson has earned a starting place following his haul of 1.1 last week against Donegal.
Some media outlets have tied themselves in knots when trying to explain the formula by which Antrim can stay up. It is quite simple, we need to win and we need Sligo to lose. Any other combination of results between our counties will result in Antrim making an unwelcome and quick return to Division 3. The Meath result doesn’t come into play. If we do our bit of the job....well, a Sligo defeat in Newbridge is not too hard to foresee.
Can Antrim beat Derry? Of course we can. By that I mean we have the players, and they have been well enough prepared. Morale in the camp is very strong and training sessions have been full on. However in our home games so far Antrim have let themselves down two times out of three with performances well below the standards they have set themselves and the standards set by Liam Bradley and his team. When they played to their potential against Meath we saw what happened. The Royals were flattered that night with a 4 point reverse, it should have been much more.
So Antrim fans have reasons to be hopeful and plenty of motivation to turn out in force. To be frank, a league campaign which featured one win from six would usually have a side relegated even before the final round of games. But because Meath and Sligo have also struggled, we are still alive going into Sunday’s game. Two out of the three will go down. With a concentrated effort, two out of the three may not be Saffron.
Throw in is 2.30pm, Club Aontroma will be selling ballots for the half time draw and there will be a match programme on sale at £2. Live match updates will be available on the ClubAontroma twitter feed at www.twitter.com , simply search for Clubaontroma.
Brendan Mulgrew
