03 March 2014
Antrim 1.17 Waterford 0.6
After national league games spread across the two codes, our senior footballers registered the county’s first points of the year with a comprehensive defeat of Waterford at Creggan yesterday on a 1.17 to 0.6 scoreline.
The win was as decisive as the scoreboard suggests and indeed only for the intervention of the woodwork and a couple of shots which went narrowly over the bar rather than under, the win could have been by as much as 20 points. Waterford are a limited county team, although those with scarred memories will recall that they twice in a row denied us promotion in the pre Bradley era.
As the old mantra says you can only beat the opposition you are playing and in dispatching Waterford with relative comfort Antrim were very impressive. The wide count – for both sides – was very low and among Antrim’s haul of points there were some terrific scores. CJ McGourty stood out with his 10 point total, the highlight being 2 within 20 seconds, the second which was a ‘catch/turn/shoot’ , all in the blink of an eye.
Paddy Cunningham was contributing well too, at times from quite a deep position, and Michael McCann, positioned again on the edge of the square made his presence felt, scrapping for possession and firing over two points in total.
While the high scoreline catches the eye the workload was shared among the whole team with our defence totally on top; the full back line allowing no space at all for the visiting forwards and our half back line breaking out at speed and linking well with the midfield and half forwards. Some of the passing was pinpoint and carved open the Waterford defence, creating space and scoring opportunity.
At the same time Waterford found it hard to find a way past the hard tackling and smart interventions of the Saffron rearguard, with Mark Sweeney breaking up their play and helping to build an attacking foundation.
By half time we were 0.11 to 0.2 ahead with the game virtually wrapped up. When Paddy Cunningham drilled to the net the match was won. The most pleasing sight from here on for the small attendance was the return to action of Sean McVeigh, Bam Neeson and Kevin Niblock, while Philip Maguire and Anton Taylor also got further chances to make an impression.
Only for some genuinely hard luck against Wicklow we could have been situated very handily for a promotion tilt. As is it the other results in the Division mean that it is still a possibility, but depends on an unbeaten run from now until the league’s end and even then the teams around us would need to keep on picking points from one another.
All Antrim can do it to take this good form on the road next Sunday away to Carlow, and keep on winning.
On the same day our hurlers will be looking for their first win of the season