ANTRIM camogie captain Lucia McNaughton isn’t getting carried away by her team’s shock 1-13 to 0-13 win over Down on Saturday.
The Loughgiel midfielder maintained that the focus was on performance rather than result.
“We came here today wanting to put in a performance that we didn’t do the last day against Down in the All-Ireland final,” she said.
“We learned a lot from that game and we felt we needed to show that we had learned from it here today. Even if we had lost by a few points, I think that our performance would have been the thing we would have taken away from the game.
“In the All-Ireland final, the occasion maybe got a little to us and we allowed Down to pull away from us after half-time. Today we didn’t let that happen. We dug in and stayed with them and it was a bit of a dog-fight really through the second half.”
McNaughton is a sister of Antrim senior hurler James McNaughton and, just like the approach to each game the hurlers have taken, Lucia maintains that the camogie team hadn’t ruled out victory against Down.
“We have confidence in the players we have and we know that we have the ability to get scores against any opposition,” she said.
“We created probably just one goal chance and Caitrin (Dobbin) took it very well.”
That goal from Caitrin Dobbin came just as the game was entering injury time and put Antrim into a five points’ lead. However, in the dying minutes Antrim’s goalie Caitríona Graham pulled off a fine save to deny Dearbhla Magee before scrambling the sliotar out for a 45 that Sara-Louise Graffin pointed.
Dobbin was one of five changes the Saffrons showed from the All-Ireland final with Laoise McKenna coming in at corner-back along with the Loughgiel trio of Maria Lynn, Anna Connolly and Shauna Devlin.
All five have been county regulars over the last five seasons although none were available at the end of last season.
“It wasn’t a pretty match by any matter of means,” said McNaughton.
“Down are a big physical team and they are very hard to get past. They make life very difficult for you no matter where you are playing on the pitch.
“They won the All-Ireland last year and they are what we wanted to measure ourselves against. So we are really happy to get the win and we will take a lot of confidence from the performance.”
Down must now beat Derry this weekend to keep alive their chances of qualifying for the quarter-finals of the National league. Derry will host Antrim then on Saturday, May 29 in the final game of the mini-league with two teams progressing to next month’s quarter-finals.
