Mark Doran speaks to the Saffron Gael
By Paddy McIlwaine
In the build up to Sunday’s NFL game against Longford, Paddy McIlwaine of the Saffron Gael spoke to Antrim manager, Mark Doran.
I first asked Mark to confirm a rumour I had heard that both Paddy McBride and Conor Small had left the Antrim panel
He confirmed that Conor and Paddy were no longer part of the squad.
“To be fair to Conor, he had made it clear when he came into the squad that he had applied for a promotion in work and if he got it he would have to spend a bit of time in Dubai. Conor ended up getting his promotion and it’s just left it now impossible for him to make the commitment that is needed.
As for Paddy, he and I had a good honest conversation last week and Paddy had informed me for personal reasons he was going to have to step away for the moment and you have to respect his decision”
I then asked him how he felt about Antrim’s league performance to date:
“The League hasn’t started the way we would have liked and if you look back on both games. In the Carlow game we did a lot right but the 2 goals in a minute we conceded were real sucker punches. We wouldn’t be happy as a group how we defended both. We responded really well to both just before half time to close the gap to one.
At the start of second half we had a very poor 3 minutes where we conceded two 2 pointers and a 1 pointer. In a 4 minute spell that was 2-5 in total and that really hurt us.
The Tipperary performance when you reflect on it was a really poor performance from us, riddled with far too many errors that were self- inflicted and a lack of discipline on our behalf really hurt us. We’ll look through that through the prism of our own eyes in terms of where we are. We will look to take the learnings from both games and progress from them.
From last year we have lost Mick Bryne, Dermort McAleese, Ruiri McCann & Conor Stewart.
Peter Healy, Ryan Murray, John Morgan, Ronan Boyle, Adam Loughran and Conor Hand all missed the first 2 games with injuries so in that regard it has been a new team.
Over the first 2 league games I think 7 lads have made their debut so in that regard it’s been good to be able to expose them to that level of football but as I said before we wouldn’t have been happy with the level of performance against Tipperary and I would expect a big improvement this Sunday”
The Saffron Gel will be at Portglenone on Sunday to cover the Antrim v Longford game – throw in 2-00pm so let’s all get out there and get behind the Saffrons as they aim to get their first points of the season on board.