By Brendan Crossan

PAUL Brady’s hit song ‘Nothing but the same old story’ must have ricocheted all around Corrigan Park every time St John’s reached the semi-final stages of the Antrim Senior Hurling Championship over the last decade.

When the Dunloy hurlers beat O’Donovan Rossa heavily in 2021 to make it a magnificent three-in-a-row, hurling’s gaze turned away from Belfast again.

Colly Murphy’s ‘Rossa side had well and truly scorched the senior championship that year and were the first city club to reach the showpiece final since St Gall’s gate-crashed the decider in 2014, but Gregory O’Kane’s Dunloy side were arguably at their peak and just too good.   

You’d need to go further back – 20 more years, to be precise – to remember the last time St John’s made it to a senior final, only to lose to an up-and-coming Dunloy in ’94. 

“I was only starting out and came on in the county final in the 1994 against Dunloy,” said Johnnies man Brian McFall. “You were thinking: ‘This is great this craic – we’ll play in finals every year.’

“But we didn’t. 1994 was my one and only appearance in a county final. I didn’t get to play in another one.”

Keep tumbling deeper into the archives, to 1973, when the Johnnies last won the Volunteer Cup – a time when Tommy Best, Gerry McCann, Des Armstrong, John Gough, Andy McCallin and Sean Burns ruled the roost and went on to claim Ulster that same season. 

Entering the 1980s, former county hurler and Johnnies man Collie Donnelly played in four senior hurling finals and lost all of them – and yet played in five football finals and won all five.

Climbing the small-ball summit proved beyond the west Belfast club and the Volunteer Cup soon became the preserve of north Antrim with Dunloy, Cushendall and Loughgiel Shamrocks sharing the coveted silver among themselves.

Over the last decade the Johnnies assumed the unwanted tag of the ‘nearly men’ of Antrim hurling.

Time and again they came up short. Hoodoo and semi-finals were synonymous with the Whiterock Road club.

Even though they firmly believed that they possessed the talent to win a championship – among them, the Johnstons, the Bradleys, the Bohills – there was always somebody better than them in any given year, and that’s all it took. 

They lost five consecutive semi-finals between 2018 and 2022. Nobody did crushing semi-final defeats quite like the Johnnies. 

Just when you thought they couldn’t lose in more dramatic fashion, the Johnnies out-done themselves every year. 

In 2018, they were five up with five minutes to play against their nemesis Cushendall and somehow conjured defeat.

The following year, it was the Ruairi Ogs again who denied them a final spot.

St John’s forged ahead twice in stoppage-time but Cushendall came back to draw the game before going on to win a tense replay. 

No club championship lifted the COVID gloom in 2020 more than Antrim’s – an unforgettable series of games that was topped by a miraculous one-armed display from Domhnall Nugent who singlehandedly took the game to Loughgiel Shamrocks.

The trees around Dunsilly still whisper about Nugent’s skill and courage that day.

Now keeping goal for St John’s this season and interpreting the role supremely well, Nugent could be on Davy Fitzgerald’s radar as back-up to Ryan Elliott.

In 2021, controversy reigned in Dunsilly as Ciaran Johnston was red-carded after 90 seconds and defending champions Dunloy advanced to another final.

In 2022, the Johnnies opened up with a fine win over Loughiel Shamrocks in Corrigan Park but suffered a surprise collapse in their last four joust with Dunloy.

Two first-half goals from Conal Cunning and a third from Nigel Elliott ruined St John’s final chances. Dunloy were unstoppable. The Johnnies went back to the drawing board.

“As soon as Dunloy got the first goal, our heads dropped and we never recovered,” McFall said.

Faith in the Johnnies began to sag after that. Club stalwart Mickey Johnston came back for another managerial stint and kept the side competitive before leaving the reins for Gerard Cunningham this season.  

The Johnnies team-sheet hasn’t changed a great deal over the last number of years – but nobody, outside of the players themselves, expected 2025 to be the year the west Belfast club reached their first final since ’94.

In their quarter-final at St Enda’s on the Hightown Road, O’Donovan Rossa were the better team – until an unfortunate slip, a scuffed goal from Michael Bradley and a raking score from defender Ryan McNulty saw the Johnnies tear up the script.

Cushendall awaited them in the semi-finals. 

The entire county began humming Paul Brady’s hit song as the Johnnies struggled to reel their north Antrim rivals in midway through the second half.

But once they managed to quell the influence of Cushendall’s brilliant young corner-forward Fiontan Bradley, the Johnnies were back in the game.

Enda McGurk, Peter McCallin and Ryan McNulty excelled in the Johnnies defence while Ciaran Johnston – the team fixer – won’t play many better games for the rest of his career than the one he produced against Cushendall.

Conor Johnston, Ciaran’s brother, passed the semi-final stress test, as did Conal Bohill and Shea Shannon in the two periods of extra-time to reach the final.

While so many gave up on them some years back, the St John’s players never stopped believing. 

You just need to trace the team-sheet back to bleaker days and appreciate what resilience looks like.

As Loughgiel Shamrocks await them in Ballycastle on Sunday, St John’s have wrestled the quill and are intent on writing their own piece of history now.

And hurling’s gaze has turned to the city again.