Northern Switchgear Antrim SFC Final
Cargin v Portgleone (Corrigan Park, Sunday, 3pm)
 
WILL it be another three in-a-row and 13th title over all for Cargin at Corrigan Park on Sunday, or will Portglenone claim a first Antrim Senior Football Championship title in the club’s history?

That is a question on everyone’s lips as we look towards another county football final which has a touch of local rivalry.

Erin’s Own have been the standard bearers in recent times, winning seven of the last nine titles and will be favourites to maintain their dominance, yet Portglenone are certainly live underdogs and having got over their semi-final hump of coming up short at that stage for the previous five years, they may head into the decider liberated to an extent.

Getting over the final hurdle has eluded the Casement’s club in the past as in their previous three county finals in 2005, 2007 and 2009, St Gall’s were the leading light in Antrim and provied their masters.

But this is a new group with bags of experience including the Delargy clan, Niall McKeever and Dermott McAleese whose hamstring problem limited him to just the first half against Lámh Dhearg, but the extra fortnight ought to see more out of the county captain.

Oisin Doherty and Ronan Kelly have been in fine scoring form while the addition of former Derry star Enda Lynn has given the Bannisters an extra dynamic this year.

There is the talent, but for manager John McKeever, it is about managing expectations although he believes his players will rise to the occasion.

“I played and lost those three finals,” he recalled.

“Our lads are not used to being in a final, which is a good thing. We are used to being in semi-finals and now we have got over that hurdle, so there is no pressure on them.

“They can go in fearless and we will prepare extremely well. We don’t plan to go into a final to make up the numbers.

“There will be a lot of excitement and deservedly so as there’s a good feeling about the club at the minute.”

There seems a permanent fell-good factor in Cargin of late when it comes to the Antrim Senior Football Championship as their know-how in the competition has resulted in the Padraig MacNamee Cup becoming a regular visitor.

They have swept through the 2024 edition with minimum fuss and although their semi-final win over St Brigid’s wasn’t pretty, there was always a feeling they would find the answers which they did.

The introduction of Benen Kelly made a huge difference and he ought to be in the frame to start, while the lid servants of the McCanns, Kevin O’Boyle, James Laverty and Justin Crozier are showing no signs of slowing down.

They may not say it out loud, but a charge at Ulster is very much in their thoughts as they clearly felt hard done by with the red card shown to Tomás McCann I last year’s game against Glen, but before they think about that, there is a job to be done and manager Ronan Devlin is aware of the challenge his players face.

“We know Portglenone well,” he confirmed.

“They won (the semi-final) very comfortably and looked really good. I know John well, so it’s fairly local as a couple of our boys live in Portglenone and Dermott McAleese lives in Cargin, so there is a real crossover.

“Portglenone wave been knocking on the door and got to a final so good luck to them, but we will be trying to make sure they don’t get one over on us.”