TONY Scullion pulls a brand new pair of Adidas football boots from his kitbag.
These are the last pair of boots Ill own, he says matter-of-factly.
Theres just the two of us in the changing room as the rest of the Antrim squad are already gone, lost somewhere in the sprawling acreage of Jordanstown.
Hes given up the search for his gumshield in his bag and speculates that his eldest daughter, aged seven, decided to play hide-and-seek with it before he left for training.
Tony Scullion is an acquired taste. If you get him, you really get him.
If you dont, well, its your loss. Take him or leave him. It wont matter a jot to him.
Scullion is a bullshit-free zone. No clichs. No big pre-Championship talk. Just stories, funny stories that would make you laugh out loud.
He missed last years Ulster Championship win over Fermanagh with a hamstring injury but was fit to return for the All-Ireland Qualifier defeat in Limerick.
Sure they took me and Sean McVeigh for a dope test afterwards, and I missed my dinner and everything in the hotel, he says.
I was trying to pee into a bottle for a couple of hours. Frankie Quinn [county secretary] had to wait and take us home.
You were only allowed to drink certain water and you werent allowed tea and a boy is standing holding a bottle. It was a f***ing nightmare.
Since the day and hour Mickey Culbert called up the roguish half-back to the senior panel over 10 years ago, Scullion has walked his own road. Now 32, the Erins Own clubman has seen it all with Antrim.
Hes made the best of the lean years of which there were many and enjoyed the odd good day in the Saffron jersey.
A builder by trade, hes as blue collar as they come.
He remembers the night the Antrim players were locked out of their own training ground at Woodlands and having to fetch his site lights from the van to provide some light for the training session.
You know yourself coming out to play for Antrim that there are going to be bad days, he says in a rare moment of seriousness.
Theres no point saying there wont be bad days. Im not saying you get used to it, but you can deal with it.
There are boys trying to better the oul thing but its coming to the stage in my career now that itll be somebody else that will deal with the highs and lows of playing for Antrim.
And the better days? Well, thats easy. The Baker Years and the balmy summer of 09 when Antrim reached their first Ulster final in 39 years against Tyrone before giving Jack OConnors Kerry a fright a week later in Tullamore. Scullions fingerprints were all over that 09 team.
It was his crucial pass that allowed his club-mate Tomas McCann to score the goal that sunk John Joe Dohertys Donegal side in Ballybofey. In the Ulster final, Scullion left Brian Dooher on the floor in the early stages.
A week later he was taking Kerrys Paul Galvin for a goal in Tullamore.
Playing under The Baker [Liam Bradley] in 2009 has to be the highlight of any of my eras time with Antrim, he says.
We got plenty of good days too.
Like, it was totally surreal for the likes of us boys travelling into Clones with 25,000 or 30,000 people watching you in an Ulster final.
Its different to going to Creggan in the month of January with maybe 35 people there and 30 of them with free tickets, you know?
But in 09 everything kind of clicked, Scullion reflects.
They brought an outsider in, in the form of Liam Bradley, who took no nonsense from anybody. There are things that go on inside camps where people get more leniency than others and then it becomes a cancer.
Baker came in with a zero-tolerance policy and stood by it.
It meant everybody put their shoulder to the wheel and pushed on. The players that were there were the best available at the time too.
He adds: We played Kerry the following week and they went on to win the All-Ireland that year.
We were going well. There was me, Justy [Crozier] and James Loughrey.
There arent too many of those 09 boys hanging about now.
But football has even changed from then to now. Locky [James Loughrey] and me were allowed allowed is the big word in that sentence to bomb on and didnt hold back.
But if you do that now youre swamped out, Rugby League-style. Its all about recycling.
I remember in 09 when blanket defences were starting to really come in and one of our players started talking about recycling the ball. Baker turned around and said: Lads, recycling is for blue bins.
Scullion laughs hard at the memory. Baker and Scullion got on like a house on fire and still keep in touch.
I didnt know him before he was Antrim manager. Me and him just clicked. You could fall in and out with him in two minutes.
Hes the personality of a cornflake and I told him that. Id still be friendly with Liam to this day.
To tell you the truth, he helped my football more than anybody because he was the only manager who came up to me and told me I couldnt shoot.
An endearing trait in Scullion is that hes the butt of many of his yarns.
At the tail-end of last year he got a call from Antrims new strength and conditioning coach Mike McGurn who began talking about him making a few gym appearances.
Scullion appreciated the call, but said he wouldnt be lifting any weights any time soon.
That stuff never suited me anyway, he says.
Its different for the likes of teachers and students who are sitting about all day, but when youre pulling yourself up and down bars of scaffolding and raking eight cube of concrete before 10 oclock in the morning, the last thing you want to do is to be looking at two wheels at the end of a bar.
The only round wheel I want to see is the end of a wheelbarrow.
This is the gospel, according to Tony Scullion. Take him or leave him. He wont care. But be sure never to underestimate him
