ANTRIM entered the last decade with a squad of hurlers brimming with potential following notable underage exploits.
Many would go on to serve their county with distinction and provide some memorable moments from 2010 onwards.
By 2020, Neil McManus was the last man standing from that crop. Seamus Maloney looks at come of the notable Saffron stars who hung up their hurl in the last decade...
BY the time the last decade started, a changing of the guard had just taken place in Antrim hurling.
Many of the players who had served through the Noughties, and backboned the Dinny Cahill-managed sides that had impressed in Championship action in Croke Park, had retired.
Some of those who remained now complemented a new core of talent, players from the minor teams of 2005 and 2006 which had, like those Cahill sides, handed out scares down south while never actually winning an All-Ireland quarter-final.
The managers of those minor teams, Dominic McKinley and Terence McNaughton, had brought those young players through during their senior tenure from 2007- ’09 and when Cahill returned to the hotseat for the 2010 season, the Tipperary man’s squad was brimming with talent from the classes of ’05 and ’06.
By the time another Tipp man, Darren Gleeson, stepped up from his backroom role to become Antrim manager before the start of this 2020 season, only Neil McManus remained.
Paul Shiels, Cormac Donnelly, Barry McFall, Arron Graffin, Paddy McGill, Shane McNaughton, Simon McCrory, Neal McAuley, Eddie McCloskey and Chris O’Connell all came out of those squads and served Antrim’s seniors with some distinction through a typically up-and-down decade.
A combination of official retirements, injury problems, time away from the game, and personal commitments mean McManus is currently the last man standing.
Not all of Antrim’s significant retirements over the past decade, however, were Cushendall mans’ contemporaries.
Here are five stalwarts of an overlapping, earlier generation, who hung up their county hurls.
LIAM WATSON
WATSON’S 2010 season was his Antrim career in microcosm.
The Loughgiel man had to be coaxed back to the Antrim set-up when Cahill took over at the end of 2009 – seven years after the Tipp man had given Watson his county debut.
He walked out of the squad after a training session falling out 10 days before the Championship opener against Offaly in 2010.
He came on at half-time, almost helped Antrim to an improbable win and would finish the summer with an Allstar nomination, scoring 0-6 from play against Cork, while also getting sent off, in Antrim’s first All-Ireland quarter-final since 2004.
Watson last played for Antrim in 2016, while his last game of county hurling was for Warwickshire, scoring 0-11 to help them win the Lory Meagher Cup a year later.
KARL McKEEGAN
LIKE Watson, McKeegan was given his inter-county debut by Cahill during his first season in charge of Antrim in 2002.
The Cushendall man played around midfield and wingback until settling in a centre-half back for the All-Ireland quarter-final against Tipperary when the reigning champions were given a serious fright before pulling away in the end.
McKeegan had made the number six jersey his own and starred again the next year, when Antrim got even closer to an All-Ireland semi-final with just some questionable refereeing decisions and a little more big game experience seeing Wexford narrowly over the line.
McKeegan’s failure to receive an Allstar nomination in either 2002 or 2003 were unquestionably poor decisions.
He captained Antrim to the Christy Ring Cup title in 2006 and moved up the field in later years, proving a canny, intelligent forward.
He retired from the county after the 2011 season, having picked up a 10th Ulster senior medal in-a-row.
CIARAN HERRON
HE made his senior debut in the 2000 Ulster semi-final win over London and became a starter the following year, so holds the dubious distinction of being the only Antrim player still active in the last decade to know what it’s like to lose a game in the province.
However, the Lamh Dhearg man, who was turning out for his adopted Dungiven by the time he retired with Antrim, saw much better days after that in Saffron, as an ever present on the wing of the defence.
He was arguably the best player on the pitch in both Antrim’s All-Ireland quarter-finals against Tipp and Wexford in 2002 and 2003, and was rewarded the latter year with a deserved Allstar nomination, Antrim’s last until Liam
Watson in 2010. Like McKeegan, his half-back partner for so much of his career, won a 10th successive Ulster senior medal in 2011.
The pair announced their inter-county retirements within a month of each other that winter.
JOHNNY CAMPBELL
WAS still a teenager when he held up his corner manfully against Tipp’s Eoin Kelly in the 2002 All-Ireland quarter-final.
Kelly was only 20 himself, but was the one of the hottest forwards in Ireland at the time, on his way to a second successive Allstar/Young Hurler of the Year double.
Campbell stepped out from the corner in the half-back line, and eventually to number six, where he anchored Antrim’s defence through their 2010 run to the All-Ireland quarter-final.
Injury forced premature ends to both his club and county career – he’s currently part of Darren Gleeson’s backroom team having previously managed his native Loughgiel – and his last match in Saffron was the 2012 Ulster final win, less than four months after he and joint-captain DD Quinn lifted the Tommy Moore Cup as the Shamrocks won the All-Ireland club title.
SEAN DELARGY
HE played through the underage ranks and began his senior career in 2002 as a sharp corner-forward but it wasn’t long before it became clear the Cushendall man’s skills were better suited to defence and he became a reliable, sticky cornerback throughout almost a decade of service.
Like Herron and his clubmate McKeegan, he retired after the 2011 season having played a key role in the memorable 2010 season.
He also skippered Antrim to their 2008 Walsh Cup victory, when they won in Kilkenny and beat Offaly in front of a raucous Casement Park crowd in the final.
In 2016, the same year he helped Cushendall reach the club’s first All-Ireland final, he made a cameo return to the county team, coming off the bench in the Ulster SHC final win over Armagh.
