SAFFRON DREAMS
MIKE TYSON’S defeat by Buster Douglas in 1990, the USA ice hockey team’s ‘Miracle On Ice’ ten years earlier, Greece’s European title in 2004. All three famous sporting upsets spring to mind this week.
Liam Bradley would understand why. The Antrim manager knows full well the magnitude of the task facing his side this Sunday when they face Tyrone in the county’s first Ulster final for 39 years.
The Tommy Murphy Cup winners versus the All-Ireland champions. A Division Four side against a team four flights higher. The last time they met was six years ago when an eight-point margin ill-reflected Tyrone’s supremacy.
For all Antrim’s achievements in defeating Donegal and Cavan to reach this juncture, it is nigh on impossible to envisage a scenario where they might claim a first senior provincial title since 1951.
“Tyrone are the All-Ireland champions and they have probably been the most consistent team in the country this last 10 years,” reasons the Derry native, “but there have been major shocks in sport before.
“The great Kerry team, Offaly beat them. The great Liverpool team, Wimbledon beat them in the FA Cup final. Sporting history is littered with major shocks and I hope there is a major shock in a couple of weeks time.”
It’s there that Bradley stops himself. Acknowledging the size of the task is one thing but painting success as a once-in-a-generation possibility, whatever about that accuracy of such a statement, sounds a tad too pessimistic.
“Maybe that’s a wrong example to give, but the shocks have been there. It would be a major shock if Antrim beat Tyrone. Let me tell you, I wouldn’t go to Clones if I didn’t think we could beat Tyrone. Neither would these players.
“We firmly believe we are in with a shout, albeit it’s going to be a mammoth task. If we perform on the day we won’t be far away.”
Bradley has known for some time that the Antrim underdog can bear its fangs. Nine years ago, a side managed by Brian White recorded the county’s first championship win in 18 years in an Ulster quarter-final against Down and very little barred them from the decider itself.
Antrim and Derry were level with just seconds left on the clock at Casement Park when Sheeny McQuillan’s 50-yard free was plucked from above his own crossbar by Anthony Tohill.
A draw secured, Derry made no mistake in the replay.
“When you are down for as long as Antrim football has been … In 2000 they got to an Ulster semi-final and the place went crazy. It just shows you they were just craving for success. These guys, every training session we took in these fields around Creggan, we have been installing that belief and togetherness into this and so far it has paid off for us.”
Bradley watched that semi-final from the terraces but he was Glenullin manager two years ago when Belfast side, St Gall’s ended his home club’s interest in that season’s Ulster club championship.
While disappointed, Bradley would hardly have been surprised. Glenullin is a leisurely drive from the Antrim border and, Gall’s aside, the Saffrons had been well represented on a number of successful Sigerson Cup sides.
Talent wasn’t an issue. Desire probably was. “Whenever I came in I had a few things to sort out. A few guys had indicated they didn’t want to play county football. I had to persuade one or two to play but it’s worked out well so far.
“Antrim is one of the also-rans of Ulster football. They had been in Division Four for the last number of years. They had been in the old Division 2B for a number of years before that. They had won only two championship matches in 30 years. The players themselves would probably have looked at it and said ‘why would I join a set-up like that’.
“Myself, Niall (Conway) and Paddy McNeill, we got them together, and from that first meeting we tried to install a wee bit of belief in the players that they were good enough, that they were as good as anything else that was out there.”
Unity, or a perceived lack of it, was another issue. Antrim has long been fingered as a county where club rivalries have impeded the senior team’s progress. Kind of like Derry actually but Bradley obviously isn’t one for such petty jealousies.
His coach and assistant manager is Niall Conway, a member of Ballinderry who would be one of Glenullin’s fiercest rivals in Derry, but neither man has witnessed much in the way of internal feuding in their adopted county.
“When we came in we went for more of a club ethic. People had told us about how city fellas don’t get on with the country fellas. It’s a cliché that’s used year in year out on the Antrim/Derry border. I have heard that for years.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. I have never met a more united bunch of players like these guys and I have been involved in football for a long, long time.”
A very different threat has presented itself in recent weeks. A press night held before the Donegal game attracted only two journalists but it was a very different story at their Creggan training base last week. Players and management are adamant that the spotlight will not faze them. That remains to be seen but the one-point win in Ballybofey is a memory that should keep their feet rooted firmly to terra firma.
“That’s a thin line between success and failure. One day you are a hero and the next day you are a villain. If we had got beat in Ballybofey that would have been the cry, ‘it’s just the same old Antrim’.
“We were a wee bit lucky that day where Donegal shot a few wides and on any other day those would have went over the bar and we would have been history now.”
The thing is, they didn’t and they’re not.
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