HE’S an actuary (a next-level accountant) by profession so it’s all about the numbers for Peter Healy who spends his days behind a desk in Dublin and most evenings chasing a ball around a field.
This year’s balance sheet don’t make for great reading for the Antrim skipper – 10 games played, eight losses and just two wins is not a profitable return. But, unlike the business world, in football sometimes the stats camouflage the truth.
A few points here and there could have made a lot of difference to their League season and Antrim’s performances against their Ulster rivals – Down, Fermanagh and Cavan – in Division Three indicate that provincial derbies bring the best out of Andy McEntee’s side.
After pushing Down and Fermanagh all the way, Antrim took the notable scalp of Cavan but they’re going to have to produce better against Armagh in their Cathedral City home in Saturday’s Ulster Championship opener.
“We’ve shown this year that we’re brave and we’ve gone for it and we’ll go down and give it a rattle,” promises Healy.
“Hopefully, as we have in some of the big games this year, we’ll be in there with 10-15 minutes to go and then we’ll see how we get on. Every year we’re trying to close that gap – two years’ ago we played Armagh down there as well and we were in the game for 45-50 minutes but the last 10-15 minutes they pulled away.
“They had superior strength and conditioning at that stage and they had a stronger bench and they really kicked on. But we’re trying to close that gap bit by bit and that’s why it’s so important that we stayed in Division Three this year.
“That’s three years’ in-a-row that Antrim have stayed in Division Three which is the first time in a while now. We’re putting building blocks in place, we have different targets to some of the others counties in Ulster but we’re looking to build year-on-year and we have a good group.”
It’s all well and good talking about “giving it a rattle” and being competitive but for Antrim to move on from their occasional morale-boosting coulda/shoulda defeat they need to genuinely believe they can go and beat Armagh. So do they?
“Absolutely,” says Healy.
“We have been underdogs in a lot of our games this year and whenever we’ve shown up with the right attitude we’ve really put it up to teams. The Down game, the Cavan game… Nobody gave us a chance and we showed up on the day.
“We have some serious runners, some of the lads are doing serious distances on the GPS this year, so hopefully we can be there or thereabouts.”
Antrim manager Andy McEntee has been there or thereabouts and got the t-shirt. An All-Ireland club winner as manager of Ballyboden, he took Meath to Division One and to back-to-back Leinster Championship finals.
“Andy has brought belief,” says Healy.
“It was early in the season when we went to Newry for the Down game and nobody gave us a chance. They had a strong McKenna Cup, they had new management in and they were looking very strong. But we went down there and said: ‘We’ve put a lot of work in as well, we know where we are and we can go down here and give a good show of ourselves’. And we did.”
