15 March 2013
In Frank Dawson’s re shaped Antrim team it is not only the way of playing which has had a shake-up, there are some personnel changes too. When Antrim travelled to London last summer for a qualifier game that we narrowly won, it was Ballymena’s Sean McVeigh who was tormentor in chief for the exiles. This season McVeigh has made rapid progress and is surely one of the first names on Dawson’s teamsheet each week.
We grabbed a few words from Sean today ahead of tomorrow’s all important clash with Roscommon.
You were on the panel prior to moving to London, what is your Antrim history?
Sean: Yes I first played for the county during the final year of Micky Culbert’s time, and throughout Jody Gormley’s spell in charge. In fact I played under Liam Bradley for the first part of 2009 but then I headed to London after that year’s National League.
How was the experience of playing against Antrim last summer?
It was a pressure game for me since I was up against boys that I know well. First and foremost I am an Antrim man, and a keen Antrim fan as well as a player. So it was a strange one for me but as captain of London I wanted to do well and people here should realise the amount of effort the boys in London put into training and playing, it is a massive effort and I have huge respect for them. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t forgotten about back home as well and thankfully I did ok that day and that meant I was back on the Antrim radar again. I still look out for London’s results and I was delighted that they won last weekend in the league.
What about your goal v Fermanagh, can we expect another tomorrow?
SMcV: That was something different for me! I ran along the line and even though I had options I just decided to go for it and luckily it came off. But in future I think I’ll concentrate on working the ball inside to men like Ryan Murray, Micky Pollock and Paddy Cunningham, they are better goal scorers than I am!
Division 3 is very, very tight. Is the squad looking over their shoulders at relegation, or looking positively at promotion?
SMcV: We are definitely concentrating on a push for promotion. The team set itself targets at the start of the year and put it this way, we all have aspirations to play in Division 2 and higher. The way the matches across the Division have worked out so far, promotion is still a possibility. If we win this weekend and follow that up with a win against Meath then we will go in to the last game with promotion in our own hands. That all starts tomorrow against Roscommon, it’s a massive game for us and hopefully there will be a big crowd there to support us.
We asked Sean to reflect on the last two draws, where they points dropped or picked up?
SMcV: Certainly against Fermanagh we felt that we earned that point after falling behind in the second half, but we were annoyed too that we did fall that far behind, that shouldn’t have happened. But is does show character that ultimately we were disappointed with ourselves. As for last week, we played excellent football in some periods but we were annoyed for sure at having not won that game. We learned plenty about ourselves though and we have been working on ironing out the mistakes we made.
In all the games we have played so far there have been strong periods of play and some not so string periods. What we are working towards is delivering a consistent 70 minutes, if we do that we can be a match for anyone.
Thanks, and good luck tomorrow.
Brendan Mulgrew, PRO
