ANTRIM welcome back Eddie and Liam Watson and Eddie McCloskey and blood newcomers Donal Nugent and Kevin McKernan in Sunday’s NHL Division 2A opener against Derry.
But despite the return of the Loughgiel trio, the Glens men, relegated from Division 1B last year, begin their league campaign with a significant hurdle to clear at Owenbeg and manager PJ O’ Mullan joked on Thursday that he would take a ‘1-0 win’ before the sliotar is thrown in.
O’Mullan, who shepherded Loughgiel to All-Ireland club glory in 2012, makes his inter-county debut on Sunday too. He admits the Ulster derby is “a tough opener” against an Oak Leaf side that began last season’s league by drawing with Kerry and beating eventual table-toppers Westmeath before falling away over their final three fixtures.
“Derry have been making great strides in the last couple of years with promotion and getting to the final of the Christy Ring, but we’ll just concentrate on ourselves as much as possible and see where we’re at,” he said.
“Everybody will be saying the pressure is on us but, if you can’t cope with pressure at this level, you shouldn’t be playing.”
Antrim will be without a sizeable contingent from All-Ireland club finalists Ruairi Og, Cushendall on Sunday, while Tony McCloskey, Daniel McKernan, Chris McGuinness and Steven Beattie are all out injured.
“Three stalwarts - Neil McManus, Arron Graffin (both Cushendall) and Paul Shiels (Dunloy) - are missing and so are another five from Cushendall,” said O’Mullan.
“So we are looking for 10 or 11 people coming in to put their hand up and say ‘I’m good enough to play inter-county hurling’. With any new management, there’s always going to be lads coming in and you’re going to be looking at lads.
“In our situation when 10 or 11 lads aren’t available, your hand is foced, but it’s a wonderful opportunity for the new players and when the Cushendall lads come back after their All-Ireland campaign, the squad will be in a great position.”
Rookies James Black, James Connolly, Saul McCaughan and Bernard Graham are named on the bench for the trip to the Sperrins and, though Beattie and McGuinness could return to the side by the time Kildare visit Ballycastle on February 21, Antrim will be short on experience for Sunday.
“There’ll be no excuses come Sunday,” he said.
“We can’t use the excuse that they haven’t played together, the bottom line is that we’ve been training for eight weeks and we all feel they’re at a level to play county hurling. They should be fit to step up and do the job.”
O’Mullan inherited the bainisteoir bid from Kevin Ryan, whose three-year term ended with league and Championship relegation last year. He says his team need to produce their best hurling to take the points on Sunday.
“I believe there’s a lot of talent in Antrim,” he said.
“I’m looking forward to it and I hope the players play the way I know they can play, regardless of what’s said about players that aren’t available. I make no bones about it, I expect Antrim to go out and, if they perform to their ability, I expect them to get a result.
“I can only talk about my own team and I know if they perform like they’ve been going in training the last couple of weeks and bring their talent and workrate to the table, they’ll have a massive chance going into any game. To me, anything less than that would be failure.”
TEAM NEWS
Antrim: C O’Connell; O McFadden, N McAuley, C McKinley; S McCrory, C, Barry McFall; K McKernan, D McKernan; E McCloskey, D Nugent, L Watson; C Johnston, N McKenna, C Clarke; Subs: G McTaggart, B Graham, C McCann, D McCloskey, D Hamill, S McAfee, J McGreevy, J Connolly, J Black, M Bradley, S McCaughan.
Derry: TBC.
