Hurling & Camogie

Antrim hurlers have made some gains despite relegation: Dominic 'Woody' McKinley

Dominic McKinley (centre) insists Antrim can bounce back following relegation to make a fist of the Joe McDonagh Cup in May
Dominic McKinley (centre) insists Antrim can bounce back following relegation to make a fist of the Joe McDonagh Cup in May Dominic McKinley (centre) insists Antrim can bounce back following relegation to make a fist of the Joe McDonagh Cup in May

DESPITE the gut-wrenching experience of relegation, Antrim’s joint hurling manager Dominic ‘Woody’ McKinley believes it’s the most committed group of players he’s worked with during his several stints in the job.

Antrim suffered an agonising two-point defeat to Laois in Sunday’s Division 1B relegation play-off at Dunloy that sends them back down to Division Two hurling next year.

“We’ve got to park this,” said McKinley.

“The spirit in the team isn’t good right now [after getting relegated] but generally the spirit has been good. This is the happiest group of players I’ve ever been with in Antrim. People say they’re not as good – I don’t mind that.

“I’m happier now than any of my other stints with Antrim because I can turn up and know who is going to be there. We are not chasing players. They’re coming for the right reasons and I honestly feel they’re moving forward by small margins but there’s a long way to go – we all have – to reach that level.

“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble lifting the players because that’s what they’ve done over the last couple of years. They’ve been there every night. I could show you the training records. I wouldn’t want to show the training records of the other teams we’ve had.”

Antrim earned rave reviews for their gallant performances against All-Ireland champions Galway and Dublin in their opening NHL fixtures this season – but they still didn’t pick up any points.

They suffered further losses to Laois and Limerick before posting a morale-boosting victory in Offaly even though they were already condemned to a relegation play-off.

“The League doesn’t lie,” insisted McKinley.

“Moral victories are no good. But if you told us at the start [how we’d perform], we feel we’ve done alright out of it but we’re seriously disappointed to be going down.

“I think our hurling at times was good against Laois on Sunday and it was good against Offaly last week. Out of all the matches we performed reasonably well and we’re moving the right way. We think we are.

“Other people might think differently. Our fitness and conditioning are coming – we’ve maybe two more years of fitness and conditioning [to do] to get up to that elite level.

“We’re going to have to drop down and that’s another battle.”

McKinley acknowledged that the squad perhaps should have travelled down for the Laois fixture in Portaloise the day before their February 17 clash – a crucial 1B clash which they lost by five points.

“The Galway match there were only a few points in it, we were close against Dublin [one-point defeat]. We maybe should have gone overnight for the Laois game down in Portlaoise. We shouldn’t have travelled [on the day of the game]. There are regrets that we didn’t get a couple of more points out of the games. But we’ll have to put all that behind us and energise the boys for the Joe McDonagh Cup.”

Despite putting in an excellent second half against Laois last weekend, Antrim still made too many basic errors and were guilty of giving away “soft scores”.

“They are very, very fine margins. We rode our luck in the first half – Laois hit the bar and Ryan [Elliott] made a great stop – but they’re fine margins and they’re hard to take. We’ve been around long enough. That’s as tough as day I’ve had because we honestly felt we’d do it, we really did. We thought we’d get over the line.

“We know that we can beat these teams but we made mistakes that we shouldn’t have made at very crucial times. We seemed to give them very soft scores back, misplaced hand passing and that sort of thing.”

Antrim face Meath in the inaugural McDonagh Cup on May 5.