IT was a sombre atmosphere as the Antrim players left the Páirc Tailteann field on Saturday afternoon as their hopes of taking the scalp of Dublin were ended in emphatic fashion on their return the Leinster Championship.
It just didn’t quite happen for the Saffrons as Dublin took a grip on the game and didn’t let go as they pulled clear to run out convincing winners.
After a positive League campaign, Antrim had hoped to push on at the weekend but they were unable to live with Dublin’s intensity, physicality, athleticism and sharp hurling.
As the players emerged from the dressing room there was clear disappointment as to how the afternoon had played out and Neil McManus, who finished the game with six points from play, agreed things hadn’t gone to plan but insists they have much more to offer on the biggest stage of all.
“That wasn’t the performance we were looking for, obviously,” said the Cushendall man.
“It just never got started, to be honest, and it’s frustrating. But at the same time one swallow doesn’t make a summer and we’ll go again because we know we’re a lot better than what we put on show there.
“Dublin are a good side. We gave them a lot of respect because we knew that. People were just thinking that, off the back of the League campaign, this was a 50-50 game – Dublin beat Galway in the Championship a couple of years ago and Galway are everybody’s favourites for the All-Ireland at the minute.
“We knew it was going to be a massive task but we can be a hell of a lot better than we were there today, and we will be in the future as well.”
McManus was one of the survivors of the last time Antrim played a knockout game in the Leinster Championship back in 2014 when they lost out to Wexford.
On Saturday, many new faces got their first taste of what is required back in the race for Liam MacCarthy and that will stand to them going forward as they now know the level needed to compete against hurling’s big guns.
“It’s still a hugely enjoyable experience any time you get out to play Leinster Championship,” McManus stressed.
“That’s the long and then short of it. But it’s hard to enjoy a day where you come down with such high hopes and nothing seems to go as planned.
“At the same time, we have an exceptional group of young players there. There are certainly better days ahead, and hopefully not that much further into the future.”
Conor Burke gets out in front of Keelan Molloy on Saturday
It’s said in sport that you win or you learn and that it now the objective for this Antrim team, especially those younger players who took to the field on Saturday.
They will know the split seconds make all the difference at MacCarthy level and that some of the things that can go unpunished in the McDonagh Cup get ruthlessly exposed.
“That’s it,” McManus agreed. “For a lot of those guys it’s a first taste of it, and it’s a shock to the system probably. But we’ll put that down as a learning experience and move on because we’ll have another opportunity here.”
Having worked so hard to return to this level since suffering relegation from the Leinster Qualifying Group in 2015, Antrim will be determined to retain their Championship status when they face Laois weekend in the first round of the All-Ireland Qualifiers that doubles up as a relegation playoff.
A return to the Joe McDonagh Cup will do Antrim, or indeed Laois, absolutely no good in their quest to push on as they need consistent exposure to the top teams in order to get to the pitch of the game against the top teams.
Therefore, they will dust themselves down and get ready for that game against a team who have always proven to be difficult opposition, but it is one they simply have to win and will aim to deliver a performance that will make up in some way for Saturday’s defeat.
“You’d be very down straight after a game but once you have the chance to think ‘right, today wasn’t a true reflection on ourselves’, your mind very quickly turns to setting the record straight,” McManus insists.
“We’re just very lucky we’re going to get the opportunity to do that. In football when you’re knocked out you’re gone, and we’re getting another go at it.”
