THE Walsh siblings from Monkstown captured the sporting headlines at the weekend when boxers Michaela and Aidan qualified for the Olympic Games.
However, another brother and sister from further north in the same county left their own mark on the weekend’s Gaelic Games programme.
While Loughgiel’s James McNaughton was revelling in his midfield role with Antrim hurlers against Wexford in Corrigan Park, his sister Lucia was also in midfield captaining her county to victory against Galway in the Littlewoods Ireland National League Division Two semi-final 100 miles down the road in Ashbourne.
The McNaughton hurling DNA is strong with their father Seamus, aka 'Crow', a defender on the Loughgiel team that went through the glass ceiling to bring the All-Ireland club title to Ulster for the first time in 1983.
Antrim’s camogie game started an hour earlier than the hurling one and Lucia’s first concern as she left the field in Ashbourne was the state of play in Corrigan Park.
“2-7 to 0-7? It’s early days yet. Hopefully we are still looking at an Antrim double.”
The camogs had also been behind in the early stages of their game, but amazingly turned things around before the break to go in on level terms at 1-5 each.
“It was very like the Down match (in the first round of the League). We had to dig really deep to stay in the game. They kept coming at us again and again in waves in the first half.
“We took a long time to settle; you would nearly think that we were still on the bus for the first ten minutes. But once we got a score or two on the board we were able to compete a lot better.
“Huge credit to our backs who were under serious pressure from the start right through the match. We were holding on for long periods of the game there and we weathered the storm.”
Missing from that back line was Chloe Drain, who suffered a broken jaw in the Derry game a week earlier, and also Lucia’s cousin Maria Lynn, a teacher in the local primary school in Corkey, who had First Communion on Saturday.
Ten minutes into the game, Antrim lost a third defender in Maeve Connolly who pulled up with an injured groin.
“It was tough on our defenders and we had to filter back a lot to help out," said McNaughton.
“I really believe our fitness stuck to us and we had that little extra during the last five or 10 minutes. It was physical and we had to take hard hits and, in fairness we did and were able to tackle hard in return. It was a really tough, tough match and we have done very well to come out the right side.”
The midfield area against both Down and Galway was fairly crowded with Lucia and her Loughgiel club-mate Amy Boyle joined by a host of players leaving sweepers at both ends of the pitch.
“It is hard playing games like these. I think Galway had two sweepers for a while in the second half and you are looking up wondering where our forwards have gone to,” says the physiotherapist who took over the captaincy at the start of the season, but has been a midfielder for club and county for much longer.
“The goal was well worked. There was a good interchange of passes and, coming right on half-time, it really settled us for the break.
“We went in for the team-talk a lot more positive and I think that showed in the early stages of the second half when we pushed on and took the lead.”
Antrim’s semi-final opponents for this weekend are Meath, but McNaughton wasn’t aware of that. However when informed that Meath had beaten Kilkenny in their quarter-final she replied.
“There you go now. Some people were saying the Intermediate All-Ireland was devalued last year because you didn’t have the reserve teams in it.
“I think that Down would have won it regardless. Would we have got to the final? Well maybe we get those answers today. We have knocked out a reserve team, so have Meath and I expect Down to take care of Cork later on this evening.”
