Brendan McTaggart speaks with Enda McGinley
7th November 2020. The last time Antrim played a game of football. The last time they could get together as a group and the last time we saw Lenny Herbinson on the sideline for our Saffrons.
Fast forward five months and with the recent easing of restrictions, Antrim are now on the cusp of a frenetic season under new management. Enda McGinley was named soon after Herbinson stepped down and he now has a chance to run his eye over his squad in person. We caught up with the Errigal Ciaran native and three-time All-Ireland winner during the week.
At a sun kissed Dunsilly, four men stood over a tactics board before dispersing. One man stayed behind. He had taken centre stage in the mini group but as relaxed as they come, new Antrim manager Enda McGinley readied himself to put the Saffrons through their paces: “Its brilliant to start thinking about games again and it’s all so close.” Said the Tyrone man as we got down to talking about finally seeing some football again, “It’s not like they’re two or three months down the line, they’re really right on top of us. Like everybody involved and pretty much every area of society, we’re pleased to be opening up and maybe a wee bit of our normal life returning again. For anyone involved in football, that’s matches.
It’s brilliant to have the games but then you suddenly realise how short the time frame you have and how much you have to get done in that time frame but it’s a good place to be.”
They may not have been together as a group, but McGinley and his backroom team have been working in the background and keeping the players conditioned since they came into the role: “There’s been a lot of individual work done but in fairness I’ve been very happy with the work that has got done. Brendan Murphy our S&C guy has gave the boys a really good programme and we’ve been keeping tabs on that with the infamous Zoom calls.
We had one meet up before Christmas for a trial and the change physically in the lads has been really good. We did remote fitness testing and again we’ve been able to chart that over two or three months and then collectively last week. The scores have been good.
The competitive training has taken it out of them. They’re sore and they’re stiff, it’s that nature we’ve all been involved in the past where you do one form of training and you think you’re fit until you go and do something else and then there’s a step up in match fitness again. That’s the challenge we’re faced with at the minute. To try and make our training as good a preparation as possible for the matches but at the same time, we don’t want to do too much and give the boys bodies time to adapt and recover otherwise there’ll be a rash of injuries, something we really want to avoid.”
McGinley has yet to finalise his squad but is using his own knowledge of Antrim football as well as calling upon a familiar face: “There’s plenty of new faces. There’s a good clutch of young players who we spoke and got great information from Hugh McGettigan, the U20s coach and if you look at their results in the past few years, they’ve been really competitive and getting results against top teams. There’s a really good clutch of younger players there for sure.” He continued: “We’re more than happy. Myself, Stephen O’Neill, Sean (Kelly) and Stevie Quinn, we’ve been impressed with what we’ve been saying to the extent you’re wondering what’s missing. It’s often been said there’s really good footballers in Antrim, I’m in a position where I’ve been a close observer of Antrim football for 14 or 15 years so I know the quality of clubs that’s there. I know the quality of championship football that’s there. Not hitting the levels they should at county level bar a couple of occasions is an ongoing sense of frustration for them and bewilderment for everyone else looking in. There’s certainly the talent football wise, you then look at other things in terms of the tenacity that some other teams play with. The likes of Fermanagh and Cavan. Those teams play with massive tenacity and the question I ask these boys now is have these boys produced those type of performance to go with the skill that is quite evidently there. That’s up to us to try and increase those intensity levels of playing but I’m well aware that management teams before me have had a similar picture and would have tried similar stuff but you just hope to get the rub of the green. They’ve been unfortunate on a couple of occasions where they’ve came close to getting over the line for promotion so you just hope at some stage that luck will change.”
Now that restrictions are lifting and training has commenced again, the next question is game time and the potential for challenge matches. McGinley added there has been frustration where that’s concerned but they have plans ahead: “We’re waiting on an update from GAA on more guidelines. The message from the Ulster Council was clubs can play from the start of May whereas the message from Croke Park appears to be there’s no inter-county challenge matches until the 8th May which seems a crazy situation. They’re trying to get the legislation changed down there but as a team we just need to get the head down and get on with it. We have a panel to finalise which is going to be very difficult, no one is making that easy. We have a game lined up with Wexford for the 8th so hopefully that will go ahead and we’ll take whatever else we get.”
With a shortened league campaign and the formation of a North and South section, each game will carry huge importance as McGinley attempts to guide Antrim out of Division 4. It begins on the weekend of the 15th May and their first opponents will have a more than familiar face in the dug outs with Mickey Harte and Brian Dooher now in charge of Louth: “Me and Stevie have spoken about it, you couldn’t really write it in fairness. For the two of us stepping up to this is a big challenge and it’s a big undertaken. To see ‘The Master’ on the sideline in our first game isn’t probably what either of us wanted but that’s the way it is. Life’s strange sometimes but it’s a game of football. I’d be a huge believer that it’s much, much less about the man on the sideline as it’s made out to be. It’s about the players on the pitch and that’s the Antrim players against the Louth players.” McGinley continued to give his assessment of what challenges his side face in the next month or so: “For me, just the nature of the season, it will be about playing simple football and making the least mistakes. Obviously making sure you’re matching up on the competitive side of things but I don’t think any team will be perfect given the time frame of four weeks of training but we have to accept that going into these games. The players I’m sure are looking forward to it, Division Four football can sometimes be overlooked but this will draw a lot of media attention I would imagine with Mickey Harte making his bow with Louth. It’s a lovely chance for the Antrim players and challenge for us.
“It’s an exceptionally tough division. You could look at it as a Division Three level of football with Leitrim unlucky to be relegated last year and they’re very happy with the progress they’ve made under Terry Hyland who had amazing success with Cavan at underage level. Leitrim will be fully expecting to go up and Sligo with their new man in (Tony McEntee) will be hoping to move places and have been playing at a reasonably high level as well recently. Then off course Louth. It’s a massively tight Division and I’m struggling to see how a team can come through it unbeaten. I can see teams dropping points to each other so it could potentially come down to things like score difference. Our two home games is certainly useful but given the calibre of teams and how early the teams will be tuned-in given the four week build up, it could be a leveller. You have three sets of new managers, trying to pick their panel, trying to get a game style and trying to get that any way well, that’s not possible in four weeks, it’s over to the players and whoever makes the least mistakes.”
The Ulster Championship draw has seen the Saffrons drawn against Armagh in the Athletic Grounds. A side who McGinley has had plenty of tussles with through the years. He is hopeful that the condensed League season could help the Saffrons when it comes to the championship: “When you’re the only team in Division Four in the Province, then every game is going to be difficult. You have to accept that every other team would be happy to pull you as well. We’ve ended up with Armagh, a Division One side and the odds are against us but Championship for me takes on a life of it’s own. A large part of it, given how compact our season is will be down to the momentum you can bring in from the League campaign. If you can go reasonably well in the League, it will go a long way to helping you in the championship. Normally there’s a month, six sometimes eight weeks between the League and Championship, teams could come out transformed from their league form but I don’t think that’s realistically a possibility this year given there’s two maybe three weeks between them. The League is very much priority.
“The Championship will be huge, the nature of it, they’re the final games of the year. You want to see how much progress you’ve made and what they’ve learned. You’re going to be playing against a higher level side and you want to see where else you need to go. You want to see how the boys stand up and they’re always big, big occasions. Obviously it will be different given there won’t likely be a crowd but it’s still a big occasion and you learn a lot about fella’s and how they stand up on these occasions. That being said, with the nature of the League this year and the pressure that’s on there, they’ll all have the feel of a Championship match there and we should know plenty about our players by then.”
Having come close on the past three occasions to gain promotion, Antrim will be hopeful of going a step further. McGinley believes it can happen as he continued: “I can’t wait to be honest. I love the coaching end of it and the boys are responding really, really well. They are a great bunch of fella’s to be working with and while I haven’t been working with them that long, just the communication with them and talking to them, the vibes are great. We have several returnees and players are putting their hand up and we’re very happy with where we are at the minute but everything becomes very real when you start playing games. There will be tougher days ahead but at this stage, you can but look forward to it.”