ANTRIM forward Mark Sweeney admits that he has almost given up hope of ever playing in the new Casement Park, but says it needs to be built soon to give the county’s youth something to aspire to.
The proposed redevelopment of the Andersonstown Road venue has been hit by one delay after the next, and is not now due for completion until 2020 at the earliest.
By that time, the Dublin-based forward will be 32 but he is content that at least he has good memories of playing in the old stadium.
The scarcity of inter-county standard facilities in Antrim is underlined by the fact that their final McKenna Cup group game against St Mary’s will take place at the council-owned Woodlands playing fields in west Belfast.
It was given a £2.1m upgrade last year, £450,000 of which was provided by the GAA, and now boasts three full size GAA pitches, including a floodlit 3G pitch, which will be used for the tie on Wednesday 10 January.
But the fact that it has been deemed a more suitable venue for the game than any of the club pitches in the county – mostly down to the lack of suitable floodlighting – underlines the problem.
“The old Casement was the best pitch I’ve ever played on,” said Sweeney.
“The Ulster Championship there, the way the stands were on top of you, you can’t really compare it to any other stadium.
“Luckily enough that I’ve had that experience but there are lads on our team that never played there, and they don’t have a home ground for their county.
“Can you imagine that, when you’re under-14 or under-16 and you get to a county final and there’s no stadium to play it in?
”Me not getting to play there doesn’t bother me as such, but it bothers me that the younger lads have nothing to look forward to.
“If we got it built, it would be incredible. It needs to happen; it needs to get pushed through so that the young ones growing up have something to look forward to.
“We don’t even have a floodlit pitch that belongs to an Antrim club – that’s just one example of how far behind other counties we are.”
The Belfast native, who played with St Brigid’s before transferring to St Jude’s in the capital at the beginning of the decade, feels that there has already been a shift in the mindset of the Antrim footballers in the early weeks under new boss Lenny Harbinson.
While paying a glowing tribute to the outgoing management team, Sweeney feels that the way in which Harbinson has set about delegating specific roles has already given things a new lease of life.
“I have to say straight up, Gearoid, 'Russ' [Frank Fitzsimons] and Pat Hughes, an absolute bunch of Antrim legends. There’s no two ways about it.
“But they weren’t supported enough perhaps in putting the structures in place for us to reach our potential as a team. That’s both on and off the pitch. There’s no other way of putting it.
“When I sat down and spoke to Lenny, one of the first things he spoke about to the players was the people he’d surround himself with – the delegation of responsibility to people that are experts in their field, and bringing us to the bare minimum of expectations for a county team with aspirations to do well in Ulster.
“That’s all we wanted as a group of players. The county board have been incredibly supportive of Lenny to date, I know that for a fact.
“This year, even though we’re only six weeks in, there’s a shift in culture and it’s a reflection of the leadership the lads have brought from the top.
“There’s a shift in culture within the players’ attitudes. But you only get proof of that when you’re faced with challenging times, when the losses set in. Let’s see if we can keep that positive energy going.”
