2018 Antrim Senior Football Championship final: Erin’s Own Cargin 0-5 Creggan Kickhams 0-4
‘WHEN you score four points in a final, you don’t deserve to bring the silverware home. When you score five points, you probably don’t deserve to either – but favourites Erin’s Own, Cargin stumbled over the line yesterday to claim their eighth county championship title.
‘It was one of those afternoons where a fair result would have been a draw, which would have allowed the two teams to forget that yesterday’s rancid game ever took place, return a week later and get significantly closer to their potential in the replay.
‘The slight problem with that scenario was that half the crowd wouldn’t have taken their chances of paying in to watch a repeat. The Antrim senior final in Ahoghill was a chronic spectacle.
‘Cargin, of course, won’t give two hoots about the poor aesthetics of yesterday’s decider - nor the fact that Creggan Kickhams kicked themselves out of winning their first senior title since 1954.’ – The Irish News match report
WE’LL start with Gerard McLarnon. A Creggan Kickhams stalwart who has coached roughly 90 per cent of the current senior football squad that will try to lay to rest the ghosts of 2018 and beyond.
Far beyond the borders of Creggan, Gerard’s name will ring a bell with GAA folk on social media. In the early throes of lockdown, Gerard had the misfortune of contracting Covid19.
It was around April time, when nobody quite knew what we were facing.
We were sure the apocalypse had arrived.
This mysterious, ubiquitous disease that seemed to lurk on every door handle, petrol pump and every carton of milk we’d lift in the local supermarket was on the verge of taking another one of life’s good guys.
“In our club Gerard would be known as a gentleman – a cool sort of figure,” said Creggan Kickhams dual player Conor McCann.
“He managed underage teams as he had a few sons on the team – and started with U12 and worked his way up to U16. Gerard has just a good way with him, the whole family is the same.”
Gerard was a very, very fit man. He ran marathons and was a member of the cycling club Creggan Wheelers.
Covid19 absolutely floored him.
It was at a time where very few local people had the virus. Niall Murphy of St Enda’s, Glengormley was also battling its ravaging effects but known cases were few and far between.
Gerard spent eight weeks in ICU. During those weeks it didn’t look good.
But then something turned.
Whether it was the on-line rosaries the local primary schoolchildren were offering up every week, Gerard’s innate fitness, or a combination of both, he pulled through.
When he arrived home, still hooked up to oxygen, the entire Creggan community applauded him. It was one of the most moving bits of film recorded during lockdown.
He’s still feeling the after-effects of the virus, but is clocking up countless laps of the walking track around the club’s pitch and hasn’t missed a game this season.
No doubt Gerard was among the crowd in Ahoghill two years ago when the two neighbours played out one of the most turgid spectacles ever recorded.
Cargin were on the cusp of dominating Antrim again while Creggan were probably weighed down by history, having not won the senior championship since 1954 and making their first appearance in a final since St John’s defeated them in 1977.
It was interesting to watch how managers Damian Cassidy (Cargin) and Kevin Madden (Creggan) – once joined at the hip with the Derry senior football team a decade earlier – engaged in a cat-and-mouse affair in the 2018 decider.
The Kickhams packed their defence and hit Cargin on the break. For long periods of that final, Cargin couldn’t work out how to attack Creggan’s defensive blanket at pace.
Creggan kicked 12 wides that day. The only positive to emerge from that bleak afternoon in Ahoghill was that the game was at least settled by individual brilliance – not necessarily a system of play.
Tomas McCann hit an unreal point from near the sideline early in the second half for Cargin and elder brother Mick McCann – cleared to play in Sunday’s final after his red card in the semi-final was rescinded – grabbed the winner with still eight minutes of normal time remaining.
Creggan’s big chance of landing the big prize slipped through their fingers. The following season the Kickhams struggled to reach the same heights and bowed out of the series to Lamh Dhearg.
Madden can be proud of his body of work at Creggan but it was time to move on – as it happened, to Tyrone – while Gerard McNulty stayed on for continuity purposes and enlisted the help of his brother Thomas, both with St Enda’s roots, as they try to topple Cargin in Portglenone on Sunday.
It’s highly unlikely Sunday’s final will stoop to the depths of the 2018 decider. Like a lot of games in both hurling and football this year, so many teams have played more off-the-cuff and it has made for better spectacles.
Winning still matters, of course – but just playing games in these difficult times is more important than anything.
And maybe when the people of Creggan think of their own journey and how they yearn for a county title, they could do worse than look to Gerard McLarnon and his indefatigable spirit and realise that having grass under your feet and being able to breathe in is really the biggest prize of them all.
