Let me know if Antrim win

My club are in the league FINAL on Sunday. There is a full fixture list of club games marked down for Sunday.

On Monday the county board will wring their hands and ask "why was there no support at the game?"

Looksa like Sean Og was in line with the Antrim county board.

I honestly believe that if Antrim were in the football final they would play the county final on the same day and simply not field at Croke.

I remember playing in the county hurling final on the day the U21s played at Croke in the all Ireland final.

Only in Antrim.

Lets hope, for the sake of the game, that Cork win easily because their county appears interested.

But someone let me know how it goes. Old habits and all that.......

This sounds familar.

Lets be honest now pat, these clubs should change the fixture themselves they have the option to do so, i know it still doesnt make sense but what do you expect from antrim gaa administrations!

I shall be in attendance for this. As a rule I have my phone switched off during the game but I will forward you the HT score and the FT score no bother.
Keep your phone on this time

Where are ya sitting mossy?

Im in the cusack section 306, wearing an old green antrim goal keepers top, 6'7 in height so id be hard to miss if your near me lol

North Side Gael wrote:Im in the cusack section 306, wearing an old green antrim goal keepers top, 6'7 in height so id be hard to miss if your near me lol

You'll have no problem with that jersey fitting ya around the waist if it was Niall Patterson's!

Jayo Cluxton wrote:

North Side Gael wrote:Im in the cusack section 306, wearing an old green antrim goal keepers top, 6'7 in height so id be hard to miss if your near me lol

You'll have no problem with that jersey fitting ya around the waist if it was Niall Patterson's!

I got the retro jersey and got called nially patterson by the brothers lol, needless to say ive taken a year away from playing to concentrate on weight loss and fitness, im now 2.5 stone lighter, long way to go but im getting there!

North Side Gael wrote:Where are ya sitting mossy?

Im in the cusack section 306, wearing an old green antrim goal keepers top, 6'7 in height so id be hard to miss if your near me lol

Be careful the dogs dont mistake you for a tree

North Side Gael wrote:Lets be honest now pat, these clubs should change the fixture themselves they have the option to do so, i know it still doesnt make sense but what do you expect from antrim gaa administrations!

The club we are playing have already managed to shift the time of their first team's game to ensure that they can field a couple of first teamers against us in the guise of their second team.

I always said that to Antrim clubs, winning South Antrim Division C (reserve) is more important than winning Liam or Sam. Well obviously our opponents think that winning Division SIX is more important than All Ireland glory for the county.

North Side Gael wrote:Where are ya sitting mossy?

Im in the cusack section 306, wearing an old green antrim goal keepers top, 6'7 in height so id be hard to miss if your near me lol

Hogan 334, I will be wearing a Galway jersey so I should stand out

This interview is a bit twee but worth the effort nonetheless

By Vincent Hogan

Saturday July 24 2010

"You
spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it
turns out that it was the other way around all the time."

There
is a lot in Dinny Cahill's story that calls into colour that storied
observation of the old New York Yankees pitcher, Jim Bouton.

You
see it's Thursday lunchtime and, as we explore his devotion to hurling,
he tosses a line our way as if he's just skimming a stone across the
lake in Dromineer. He is almost absent-minded as he says it.

"There's
loads of things I didn't do in life," he confesses. "For instance, I
was never on a golf course." Now, knowing the geography of North
Tipperary, we find this observation scarcely credible. As the crow
flies, Dinny's home in Cloughjordan is maybe three miles from Beechwood
and Nenagh Golf Club.

Not once Dinny?

"Never," he
stresses. "Honest to God, that he may strike me dead, the nearest I was
ever to a golf course was having a meal in Thurles clubhouse after
winning a Munster minor title. I remember looking out at lads playing
and thinking: 'How can they be bothered playing that game when you can't
even run in it?'

"No tackles, nothing (laughing)."

passion

Dinny
is closing in on his 56th birthday. He estimates that, in total, he
might have watched "about 60 minutes" of the recent World Cup in South
Africa. He's never been to a soccer or rugby international in his life.
On occasion, he'll sit by the TV to watch Munster give someone a
grilling at Thomond. He recognises something of the GAA in their
passion.

But soccer?

"I would always feel 'tis an awful
waste of 90 minutes to sit down and often see no goals," he says,
hooting again with mirth. "Maybe I'm very old-fashioned."

Dinny's
missionary work takes him wherever the need is greatest. He was in
Dunloy with his team to meet the press last Tuesday night and in Belfast
to watch the Antrim U-21s on Wednesday. Twenty four hours later, he was
back in Casement Park again, this time for training. The Volkswagen
jeep he bought new off Damien Hayes in Portumna last January already has
42,000km on the clock. It is on its second set of tyres.

The
energy that binds him to Antrim is a puzzle in his head. If training is
in the Glens, it can be a 10-hour round trip. So, he pulls the door of
his workshop behind him just after lunchtime and doesn't see home again
until around one the following morning.

He marks the journey
south in gentle increments. His love of traditional music has him tuned
into Dublin's Country Mix, until the signal fades. Then he switches to
Johnny Barry on KCLR. Sleep begins tugging at his eyelids by Mullingar
and he usually pulls in for a little break.

The tiredness, Dinny
reckons, is psychological. Somehow, Mullingar always feels close to
home, even though he still has an hour and a quarter to travel.

You
ask him to, maybe, provide a list of teams he has worked with
throughout his adult life and he professes himself incapable. For maybe
quarter of a century, his evenings have been spent on hurling fields all
over Ireland, spreading the gospel.

Today, he is wearing a
Meelick-Eyrecourt polo-shirt, a random choice. His love of the game has
forged little loyalties and friendships in maybe a hundred parishes.
"Some lads would probably shoot me for things that I did," he smiles,
specifically mentioning Templetuohy.

The first time Antrim called
him north (2002), he had just guided Templetuohy to an intermediate
county final. Back then, the National League kicked into action before
Christmas and, soon, Cahill came to realise there just weren't enough
hours in the day.

"I had so little time, I just had to walk away
from Templetuohy," he reflects now. "They lost that county final and I
don't think they ever forgave me. I have great friends in the club, but
I'd say I'm still in the bad books down there."

Maybe the biggest
kick he's had as a mentor was guiding his beloved Kilruane-McDonaghs to
a recent county minor. Yet, Kilruane's relationship with success has,
on occasion, been complex and a little strained.

It saddens him
that those minors haven't really progressed since and, in this, perhaps
there are echoes of the All-Ireland winning seniors of '86.

For
they, too, seemed to declare their innings at the very point of
coronation. Dinny was a 31-year-old veteran on that team, yet he hurled
away at senior level for another decade. Kilruane's was a tight-knit
dressing-room, made up of stalwart families with surnames like Williams,
O'Se, Hogan and Quinlan.

They were guided to their destiny by
Len Gaynor, a man Cahill believes has kept countless young Kilruane men
"off the wrong road." Yet, the club never quite harvested what they
could have from that win.

"Looking back, winning the All-Ireland
didn't help our club" says Dinny. "Because some of us stayed hurling
until we were gone over the top and, maybe, we didn't let younger
players come in and have a crack at it. As a result, we went down to
intermediate and dwindled from there on.

"Our team had been
pushing on a little when we won the All-Ireland. I'd say there was at
least six or seven lads over 30. Then we were put back in charge of
teams after that and maybe we weren't always the right people to be put
in charge of teams either.

"I'd say we were too used to success
and demanded too much. Fellas probably felt we were pushing them too
hard. But we did our best in good faith."

Dinny Cahill always has
done.

Tuesday's press night in Dunloy was, he says, both a joy
and an irritation. On one level, it reminded the Antrim players that
they are "not alone" now. On another, it served to recycle all the
strange and prickly mischief of '04.

"Dinny, remember what you
said about Brian Corcoran ... "

Up on the roof of Ireland, it's
sometimes easy to believe that you are in another time-zone and, maybe,
that's what threw him. Antrim exist in eternal isolation, their
challenge games rare and rationed through logistics, their achievements
little miracles of resolve.

He thinks of the big freeze this
winter and how, some nights, the roads to training were utterly
treacherous. In the worst of it, young Neil McAuley crashed his car en
route to a session in Cushendun. There were other nights on the
all-weather at Creggan or in Randalstown when the safe (and sane) option
would probably have been for players to stay at home.

So, what
drew them into the black nights?

Exactly a year ago this weekend,
Antrim hurling was a board-room irritation. They were devoured by
Offaly (1-28 to 0-13) in a relegation play-off and looked set for a
return to hurling for the Christy Ring Cup when it was pointed out that
they had just been guaranteed three years in the restructured Leinster
Championship.

Only in the absence of "joined-up thinking," did
Antrim manage to face down the threat of being dumped from the Senior
Championship. A Special Congress in September eventually decided to
shelve relegation plans and allow 13 counties chase the Liam McCarthy.

So,
Cahill reintroduced himself to the county in a meeting with the players
at The Elk in Toomebridge on the first Friday in January. His
predecessors, 'Sambo' McNaughton and 'Woody' McKinley had walked away,
exasperated.

Yet, in The Elk, he sensed immediate enthusiasm for
his back-room team. Jerry Wallis, who would oversee the physical
preparation, had just been let go after eight years training Cork. Bob
Thornhill was another Corkman and a former county minor selector.
Gregory O'Kane was, arguably, Antrim's finest forward of recent times.

Through
the worst of the winter, Cahill, Wallis and Thornhill travelled north
only on weekends, training being taken in their absence by Jimmy Miller
and O'Kane. It would have been easy to identify any corners cut, but
Dinny could find none.

Hence, Antrim now find themselves in the
last six of the Championship. Facing Cork. And the question becomes
unavoidable. So, Dinny, what on earth were you thinking with all that
trash-talk in '04?

"Well I'll use Martin McGuinness's phrase," he
laughs "That was then, this is now!"

But vowing to put Corcoran
back in retirement? Branding Niall McCarthy an "awful" centre-forward?

PROMISING

"We
can look back and say we were all naïve at the time, but Cork hadn't
really hit the big time back then," he says more seriously. "They were
coming. They'd won an All-Ireland in '99 and were promising a lot.
That's all I was trying to say.

"But I often wonder what I said
that was twisted. Because all I remarked at the time was that Cork
brought Brian Corcoran out of retirement to replace Setanta O hAilpin.

"Now
I'm not sure what my exact words were, but I said something like maybe
he might be going back over his decision once the game was over.

"I
didn't say I was going to put Brian Corcoran into retirement. I had no
intention of putting him into retirement. Brian had retired before that
and that was decision and he's retired again since and that was his
decision. So I think it was twisted a little.

"The big headline
on the paper was 'Cahill promises to put Corcoran back into retirement'.
And that was not the case. I've a great respect for all hurling people
and Brian Corcoran in particular. He won an All-Ireland as a defender
and as a forward. Any player that can do that, has to be a top-class
hurler."

And the "awful" Niall McCarthy?

"Niall had got
man-of-the-match against Tipperary a few weeks before that," he
explains. "And I felt he wasn't actually that good in that particular
game, that he had just been allowed too much freedom. I felt that all we
needed to do was close him down better than Tipp had.

"I didn't
say that he wasn't a good hurler, but that was the slant put on it. It's
what sells papers, I suppose."

Wallis has given him chapter and
verse of the mileage those incendiary words would run up in the Cork
dressing-room.

In fact, Corcoran himself would write in his
autobiography 'Every Single Ball' of the Cork manager, Donal O'Grady,
taking out the newspaper clippings and angrily rolling them into a ball.
"There's only one answer to that," roared O'Grady. "Destroy them."

And,
of course, Cork duly did.

"Look, as far as I'm concerned, it's
just water off a duck's back," says Dinny evenly now. "It's a long time
ago and a lot has happened since. I look back at it the odd time and
have a good laugh at it to see how people can swing a thing around to
suit themselves. It doesn't bother me."

There was little
signposting of this journey in Antrim's National League campaign. They
finished joint second bottom of Division 2 with two wins out of seven.
Yet, according to Cahill, "The dogs in the street know I'm not a lover
of League hurling."

With Antrim's stretched resources, he simply
used the League to find a Championship bench.

Dinny reckons that
they created 43 scoring opportunities during their Leinster Championship
clash with Offaly, a game the midlanders sneaked in extra-time after
Shane Dooley's late equalising free.

That score was prefaced by a
little tussle on the line between Cahill and Joe Dooley. It was like
seeing two priests squabble outside a sacristy, because neither is known
as volatile. Dinny explains the context.

He says: "I was trying
to get two players back from the ball and maybe Joe heard me saying 'Go
back Shane!' But I was calling for Shane McNaughton to go back. And,
when I turned, Joe was coming ... on a mission (laughing).

"I
definitely didn't say anything to Shane Dooley (Joe's son), I wouldn't. I
can say with hand on heart I didn't try to interfere with Shane Dooley
trying to put the ball over the bar. But I suppose these are the things
that happen in games.

"When Joe ploughed into me, I thought I
wouldn't be able to pick myself up for a week (laughing). Look, Joe has
that forgotten about and I have it forgotten about too."

Maybe
that performance against an Offaly team that would, subsequently, take
Galway to a replay was overlooked in the subsequent jostling for
Championship odds.

hindsight

Antrim subsequently needed to
overturn an eight-point deficit to see off Carlow and pitched up in
Croke Park last Saturday at a neglected 6/1 to bring down Dublin.

Hindsight
makes the trap seem so obvious now.

Cahill has been in receipt
of a few grateful texts this week from people (among them one of his
sons) he advised to avail of the odds.

"We always felt, if our
fellas hurled, we'd be a match for any team," he says.

"Maybe
Dublin should have punished us more when they had their period of
dominance. But, once our players felt that they could win it, they
surged on. And that was it. It didn't matter who Dublin were going to
bring on once these lads saw the finish line."

He is, as you
would expect, studiously diplomatic about Cork now. In all likelihood,
this is the end of the fairytale.

Yet Cahill saw enough in Dunloy
last Tuesday night to reassure him that his return to the county hasn't
been a waste. "The great thing is to see the reaction of the kids," he
says. "If a 10-year-old sees Antrim beating Dublin, he's interested in
the Antrim jersey.

"I don't know what the result on Sunday will
be. But, if by any chance Antrim were to beat Cork, any doubt that was
ever in an Antrim person's mind is gone. And that would be brilliant for
the next generation of hurlers."

Either way, that Volkswagen
won't do too many tea-times in Cloughjordan.

now im not too clued in on the auld rules of hurling but when a keeper is pucking the ball out arent the not permitted from leaving the wee square?

i was in the canal end yesterday and every puck out donal og hit he was well out of the box. every other keeper stayed in it. cork got about 4 points off these puck outs in the second half. should these have not been pulled back and a 65 awarded?

redhandman wrote:now im not too clued in on the auld rules of hurling but when a keeper is pucking the ball out arent the not permitted from leaving the wee square?

i was in the canal end yesterday and every puck out donal og hit he was well out of the box. every other keeper stayed in it. cork got about 4 points off these puck outs in the second half. should these have not been pulled back and a 65 awarded?

Donal Og is always doing this. Never caught on it. The rules are changed now, if a goalkeeper steps outside the small rectangle a throw in will tale place on the 21.

hurlingguru wrote:

redhandman wrote:now im not too clued in on the auld rules of hurling but when a keeper is pucking the ball out arent the not permitted from leaving the wee square?

i was in the canal end yesterday and every puck out donal og hit he was well out of the box. every other keeper stayed in it. cork got about 4 points off these puck outs in the second half. should these have not been pulled back and a 65 awarded?

Donal Og is always doing this. Never caught on it. The rules are changed now, if a goalkeeper steps outside the small rectangle a throw in will tale place on the 21.

all the other keepers were nearly breaking their leg to stay in the square yet he was going 2-3 yards out every time. what are the umpires doing. linos get petty over taking a step over the side line for cuts/kicks yet the umpires are leaning up against the post doing diddly squat only wavign wides and points!

They seem afraid to pull Donal Og for some reason .... I don't think he has any interest in staying in the box at all.

Jayo Cluxton wrote:They seem afraid to pull Donal Og for some reason .... I don't think he has any interest in staying in the box at all.

JC i started a thread about jokes for the same fella yet no one replies i try to get a answer to a question and your first man in with the innduendos!

What innuendos???