Ulster U20 Football Championship Section A: Monaghan v Antrim (tonight, Castleblayney, 7.30pm)
YOU would think it difficult to look at a 33-point hammering where the opposition scored more goals than you did points and turn it into a positive example of a team’s character.
Eleven days ago, Antrim U20s were beaten 8-16 to 0-7 by Tyrone in Dunsilly. They went in at half-time with the four goals separating them, 4-5 to 0-5, which is not as facetious as it might sound.
Three years ago, Tyrone reached an All-Ireland minor final with this group.
Antrim’s crop were beaten 4-22 to 0-8 by Donegal that year.
See, this team has taken some awful poundings the whole way up. And yet they keep on showing up, time and time and time again.
Somehow, Antrim have retained more than half of that minor team through to U20.
“The biggest compliment I can pay the boys is that they never shy away,” says manager Niall Jackman, who had previously coached under Hugh McGettigan.
“The numbers are fantastic at training, nobody is ringing in sick, nobody’s missing gym sessions. They’re giving it their absolute all.
“Them boys know, and we said after the likes of that defeat, we’re at a different level to a lot of the boys in our group but you use this four or five months to get the absolute best you can out of yourself, to bring back to your club and push on and hopefully play for Antrim seniors.
“The boys are really clinging on to that. That’s probably how they really drive themselves on and keep it going.”
Go back to the MacRory Cup quarter-final in January between the two heavyweight south Derry schools, St Patrick’s Maghera and St Mary’s Magherafelt. A game littered with All-Ireland minor winners on both sides, the best player on the pitch that night was a Moneyglass man, Tiernan McCormick.
Cahir Donnelly was starting for a championship-winning Cargin team 18 months ago while the injured sharp-shooter Conhuir Johnston has grown up with high hopes attached.
Manus McCrossan will push on from the famous St Gall’s stable, while Jackman believes Ciaran Maginnis belongs on the list of names that will play senior football for Antrim in the near future.
“There’s five boys that you wouldn’t bat an eyelid at them being senior inter-county footballers, they’re well capable of it.
“But there’s too many levels within the U20s and the stark reality is in my experience, there might be 40 to 50 per cent of that I wouldn’t be confident they’ll still be about playing senior club football in the next two or three years.
“We need to change all that, but I don’t know how, I don’t have the answers.”
Last year, they took Donegal to extra-time before losing out. They’d actually beaten Derry in 2020 and given them their fill of it again two years later.
But Jackman is concerned when he looks beneath. The groups coming up have been taking on more water at Buncrana Cups and at minor again.
There is an acknowledgement that it could get worse before it gets better.
They’ll end up in the All-Ireland ‘B’ championship at the end of a provincial group stage that dealt them a cruel hand.
In a five-team group, they have had that outing with powerhouses Tyrone.
Tonight it’s Monaghan, infused with a healthy sprinkling of the team that reached last year’s All-Ireland minor final.
Then it’s Ulster U20 holders Down before they have one more night in the belly of the beast with the latest batch off Derry’s conveyor belt.
There might have been some small solace or respite if they’d drawn even one of Cavan or Jackman’s native Fermanagh.
Instead, they’ll have to tighten their core and take whatever comes.
“There’s lads there that have experienced heavy defeats before and they’re used to getting back on the horse,” says the Saffrons’ manager.
“They realise that they’ve probably been failed in a number of areas in their development growing up in Antrim, from a county’s perspective, maybe from a schools’ system perspective as well. They’re well aware of it.”
Those factors are so plentiful that there isn’t time to dissect it all before he has training with Tír na nÓg in Randalstown, who began their Antrim league campaign with a creditable if ultimately frustrating draw against Lamh Dhearg last week.
The lack of Antrim players being exposed to MacRory Cup, to Freshers ‘A’ football, to Sigerson Cup has long been a visible symptom.
For the crop of players at his hand right now, he has nothing only good things to say, because their resilience and character has been tested more than perhaps any U20 team in recent memory.
It’s just the wider issues.
“With the concentration and population of players that are out there, it’s just not been good enough.
“There’s not been enough emphasis put on that. Until there’s some sort of strategic plan to address that, it’s not going to change.
“The other thing as well I would say, I make no apologies for saying it, culturally there’s not the same emphasis put on it by players themselves.
“It’s not the be-all and end-all in the majority of households in Antrim that it is in south Derry, even my own county Fermanagh, we’re well used to punching above our weight because Gaelic football is the be-all and end-all. Tyrone’s the same, Donegal’s the same.”
Twenty minutes on a wet Tuesday evening barely dusts off the surface, never mind starts to scratch at it.
Sixty minutes in Castleblayney could feel like a week.
But next week, they’ll all come back again.
You don’t wish to patronise, but is that not some small form of success in itself?