Hurling & Camogie

Loughgiel's Liam Watson hungry to carve new Antrim hurling chapter

Liam Watson helps launch this year's Allianz National Hurling League along with Wexford's Lee Chin at H&amp;W in Belfast earlier this week <br />Picture by Hugh Russell&nbsp;
Liam Watson helps launch this year's Allianz National Hurling League along with Wexford's Lee Chin at H&W in Belfast earlier this week
Picture by Hugh Russell 
Liam Watson helps launch this year's Allianz National Hurling League along with Wexford's Lee Chin at H&W in Belfast earlier this week
Picture by Hugh Russell 

FOUR years out of an Antrim shirt has been four years too long for Liam Watson. The Loughgiel hurler reflects on his journey back into the fold. Kevin Farrell writes... 

FROM any angle you look, Liam Watson’s hurling story is one of light and shade. Yet the passion for his craft has never dimmed.

Loughgiel’s second All-Ireland triumph on St Patrick’s Day four years ago had ‘Winker’ at its beating heart. His jaw-dropping 3-7 haul ripped Coolderry from Offaly to shreds. The glorious Shamrocks, peerless Jim Nelson in their number, partied like it was 1983.

2012, though, was also the last time Watson turned a competitive stick for Antrim. A muted Ulster final win over Derry came just a week after a shelling by the Shannon. A county already unravelling was put in its box by Limerick.

The door just wouldn’t open on Kevin Ryan’s new beat. Dublin then came circling in 2014: “I did speak with Dublin, yes, but I just wasn’t prepared to switch clubs and that was it,” he maintains.

“I’d have definitely loved the chance then to face Antrim because I was that hurt and annoyed... just to show some people what they were missing out on. But I’d be glad now that one didn’t work out.”

There was plenty said about his Saffrons absence, more penned: “There’s always been the snipes and my name as usual got chucked about the paper,” adds Watson.

“I was over in Dunloy one night there and ones were giving me gyp, saying if PJ [O’Mullan] wasn’t manager I’d be nowhere near Antrim. That’s the biggest pile of crap. I’ve always wanted to play for Antrim, test myself against the best. They can’t blame me. I’d always put my name forward, but I just wasn’t being picked by him [Ryan]. Obviously I’m back in there now and I’m not hearing any gripes or seeing wee groups in there. 

"Everybody’s been wile friendly. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting to be best friends with everyone. But I went and approached players and asked what they’d heard about why I wasn’t in there. They gave me the story. I told them that was bulls**t. I gave them my side. But then I said this wasn’t about me and Kevin Ryan (right) any more. I’m here to play now and if I help them and they can help me then Antrim will start going forward again.”

Going forward under O’Mullan, his former club boss who succeeded Ryan last November, is something he’s versed in. Four county and Ulster club crowns on the bounce until 2013 and that Tommy Moore Cup triumph jump off the page.

Those days in the sun will always be prized. But Watson could also fill a book about punching in the hard yards, the lonesome slogs to get to the well. When it comes to totting up knee ops, he’s running out of fingers. From he first tore an anterior cruciate ligament as a noted teenager in 2002, there have been a further “seven or eight” dates with scope and scalpel.

Another ACL rebuild was chalked off in 2011 under the trusted steer of Dr Richard Nicholas. That surgery sandwiched Watson’s 2010 Allstar nomination for his part in Antrim’s jaunt to an All-Ireland quarter-final with Cork and that precious All-Ireland club capstone banked with his people.

Both knees, the scoring machine concedes, have been cut to the tightest of quicks: “I’ve had that many repairs, there’s really no cartilage or stuff left to trim or fix now,” he states.

“There’s times it’s been nearly soul destroying, putting all the recovery sessions in to getting back on that field and then something maybe just goes again. I can’t pivot anymore. We played Laois there on a 3G pitch and there’s no give so I had to run in a penny circle to get round a man. But you just have to adapt.”

In such light, it would be easy then for a busy 33-year-old with screws holding a decorated career together to forget about chasing lost time and revised hope in Saffron fatigues. Division Two outposts and the Christy Ring Cup, he knows from memory, are messy old stations.

On his most recent post-surgery review last July - a month before he wed Belfast camóg Maighréad McCotter - Watson was told to listen and listen hard to his legs: “I really didn’t know if I’d be 


hurling for anybody again,” he said.

“The surgeon told me to just concentrate on walking, there was no harm playing a bit of sport to be fit or doing stuff with the family, but I’d be crazy to jeopardise things over the head of competitive GAA. But my biggest problem is I’m that headstrong. I’d still see myself in the top five forwards anywhere. I have to think that or I’d not be the same player. When I get myself fit to hurl, I just want to keep on playing. It’s my sport.”

‘Winker’ had some unfinished business too. Cushendall had prised Loughgiel’s four-year grasp off the Volunteer Cup in 2014. And when Ryan stepped away after last season’s NFL and Championship wipeouts, that nagging Antrim itch was biting hard.

A new window-cleaning venture around the towns would help countless weights and spin sessions keep the muscle groups about the knees in tight fettle. The wife and parents rowed in. But his 11-year-old son, who has never shied from poking the old man’s ribs with the bás for sins on the field, was cagey over the grand plan: “I was telling him what the doctor said then I told him I was hoping to get back with Antrim. 

“He just said ‘No, don’t be doing that Daddy because that means if you get hurt with Antrim, you’ll not be fit to play for Loughgiel’. Eoin’s club mad, but I’ve been dusting off the DVDs and showing him me playing in Croke against Dublin, Cork, the Wexfords and that. So he’s now starting to realise what Antrim means to me too.”

If Watson needed any convincing about seizing the day, September 13th last year delivered an epiphany and then some. Moments into the second-half of a county semi-final with Cushendall in Dunloy, a spectator fell ill. The war was waved off. Watson could read the faces. He sought out PJ O’Mullan.

“I asked PJ who it was. He said go into the changing room and they’d try to find out. I was that cross and said ‘you f****ing find out now’. Maybe PJ hadn’t wanted to tell me right away it was my daddy,” he recalls.

Paddy Watson had collapsed from a heart attack. A defibrillator was used. Five priests and a bishop were there. The Last Rites were given: “I ran and jumped over the fence,” says Watson. 

“Och, there wasn’t a kick in him... they were telling me to slap his face. We still can’t thank the paramedics and ones from Dunloy and Cushendall for all they done to keep him here.”

Still in his club kit, Watson chased the ambulance to Belfast’s Royal Hospital. An off-duty medical worker who was at the game nursed Paddy Watson all the way. Hours later, his father out of theatre, Watson gazed across the cardiac recovery ward. 

Cushendall hurler and Antrim skipper Neil McManus - the firmest of rivals - was at his own father’s bedside. Hugh McManus had a heart attack the previous day while golfing: “Me and Neil sat down and we just had a good chat about stuff up there,” he says.

“We then more or less said we’d see each other next week, forget about the heart attacks for an hour and it’d be business as usual.  But there was big, big respect shown there, where the hurling didn’t really come into it, just as long as both the fathers were alright.”

Paddy Watson’s first words when he opened his eyes were ‘Who won the match?’ He wasn’t too chuffed at being told to skip the replay. There’d be other days, his nearest convinced him. The Ruairi Ogs sneaked home by a single score en route to keeping their crown. 

Watson and McManus, fuelled by lightness and relief, shared 20 of the game’s 29 points in a white-hot tit-for-tat shootout. The pair of them won’t share the Saffron cause this year, though. On Liam Watson’s record, that’s a crying shame. 

The latter has a travelling itch to scratch after Cushendall complete their All-Ireland escapades. No-one could deny the man that. As for Watson, a busy winter was lodged. Trademark dead ball accuracy shook off the rust. 

And having lent his own backing to the Ruairi Ogs’ dreams from the  Navan stands last weekend, he’s now like a kid being handed his first stick: “If there’s two spiders going up a wall here, I’ll be trying to beat the both of them to the roof,” he says with a laugh.

It’s Derry away on St Valentine’s Day for openers. All the family will be in Celtic Park tomorrow. Backing their man to the last. Backing their county to the hilt. The spark was definitely missing for a time - but two oul’ flames, with a whole pile of history, are learning to fall in love all over again.

LOOK OUT FOR


With Cushendall’s All-Ireland hunters out of the league loop and last season’s chief scoregetter Paul Shiels now recovering from hip surgery until late spring at best, opportunity knocks under new boss PJ O’Mullan.

Ballycastle’s Saul McCaughan is a highly-rated talent and was pivotal in his club’s run to the county final. The decision of last year’s stand-out Antrim U21 player to return to the frame having originally opted out for the year due to work commitments is a major shot in the arm.

Voted joint-north Antrim player of the year 2015 with Ruairi Ogs’ Neil McManus, his ability is probably best served in the inside forward line. His versatility and clever movement provides options from the midfield through.

Loughgiel forward Dan McCloskey may hope to realise his potential under his ex-club manager, while Sarsfield’s midfielder Kevin McKernan, back in harness after a couple of seasons out, impressed throughout the Walsh Cup campaign, particularly in the victory over UCD. 

Clubmate and forward Niall McKenna, Ballycastle full-back Mattie Donnelly, Carey Faughs midfielder James Black and St John’s attacker Conor Johnston all served sharp notice of intent and should feature strongly. Rossa’s former county minor skipper Conor McClelland also showed well when given a crack in the full-back line.

Expectant eyes will be drawn to the impact Liam Watson might make after exile. His 22 points over three Walsh Cup games against Laois, Dublin and UCD suggest he is primed for battle, while his link-up with clubmate Eddie McCloskey and McCaughan is an appetising prospect.

VERDICT


Relegation to the cold house of Division 2A and subsequent demotion from the Leinster SHC into the Christy Ring mix left Antrim with a job of work for 2016.

Yet, when PJ O’Mullan stepped in last winter in the wake of Kevin Ryan’s departure, the All-Ireland-winning boss with Loughgiel wasted no time in declaring nothing would be left unturned in his quest to rectify last year’s double disaster. O’Mullan has been true to his word so far. He recruited a raft of fresh voices including wily ex-Waterford boss Justin McCarthy and used early sharpening stones to find his feet and foster a fresh spirit.

A stacked pre-season preliminary panel competed well during Leinster’s Walsh Cup, won Ulster’s McGurk Cup and squeezed in a glut of challenge games for good measure. A squad-bonding trip to Cork last weekend delivered a 12-point win over UCC and a few lessons were learned in a trimming by the Rebels.

If the Saffrons are to chart a course towards NHL redemption this year, they must do it minus a key trio. The absence of Dunloy shooter Paul Shiels through injury and Cushendall rocks Neil McManus and Arron Graffin, who have both opted to take a year out from the county, is a stark reality. 

Another handful of Cushendall players, including defensive linchpin Ryan McCambridge, are also out of the NHL picture in light of the Ruairi Ogs’ road to Croke. Yet their journey, and that of Creggan – combined with a rewired county board – have conjured a rare feelgood factor in the county that should be tapped into.

The forward options still appear healthy, notwithstanding Shiels’s void. Ciaran Clarke and Conor Johnston are well capable of shouldering the scoring burden alongside the talented crew of Liam Watson, Eddie McCloskey and Saul McCaughan.

A glance down the track would suggest the league is fraught with more trip-wires than the Ring Cup. Antrim will need to catch a flier out the gate against Derry then Kildare. Successive tests inside seven days in March against Leinster pair Westmeath (away) and Carlow (home) look like being the proper litmus tests.

Heavy defeats to the same pair last year, afterall, sealed the county’s Championship fate after beating Laois had sprung false hope. They may have been spooked early on in Mullingar by a horrific knee injury to Arron Graffin. But with his and Neil McManus’s absence at Cullen Park and then the red mist descending with two red cards, they were well clipped by the Barrowsiders. 

Settling those two particular scores would definitely get the sliothar rolling again for a charge at instant promotion and then the Christy Ring Cup and its ticket back to Leinster.

2015 RESULTS


National Hurling League Division 1B


Final position: last; lost play-off with Kerry, relegated to Division 2A.


Wexford 1-24 Antrim 2-20; Antrim 1-12 Limerick 0-23; Antrim 1-14 Laois 1-18; Waterford 4-30 Antrim 0-10; Antrim 0-19 Offaly 2-17; Relegation play-off: Laois 2-18 Antrim 1-13; Relegation/promotion play-off: Kerry 2-16 Antrim 1-18

Championship


Leinster SHC qualifier group round one: Antrim 5-17 Laois 3-22; qualifier group round two: Westmeath 1-21 Antrim 0-7; qualifier group round three: Carlow 2-18 Antrim 1-11; Ulster SHC final: Antrim 1-15 Down 1-14

2016 FIXTURES


NHL Division 2A


Sunday, Februay 14 (2pm, Celtic Park): Derry v Antrim; Sunday, February 21 (2pm, Ballycastle): Antrim v Kildare; Sunday, March 6 (2pm, Mullingar): Westmeath v Antrim; Sunday, March 13 (2pm, Ballycastle): Antrim v Carlow; Sunday, March 20 (2pm, Ruislip): London v Antrim

Championship


Christy Ring Cup round one, Saturday, April 23: Antrim v Kildare; round 2A/2B, Saturday, April 30: Antrim v TBC; Ulster SHC semi-final, Sunday, June 19: Derry v Antrim