RELEGATION to Division Four of the National League was a huge disappointment for Antrim, but Paddy McBride insists that has been parked and will have no bearing on their approach to Saturday’s Ulster Senior Football Championship quarter-final against Armagh.

The Saffrons will look at that campaign with a mix of frustration and regret as there were enough near misses which could have had a better outcome and saved them from the drop.

A one-point loss in Fermanagh, two away to Laois and three at home to Sligo were games in which they could have taken something from with a little more consistency in their performance - an issue which plagued them as they would impress in spells within a game without putting it together for the full 70 minutes.

This is a glaring issue that Antrim has to address, not just this weekend, but going forward as even in their 1-26 to 1-15 loss away to Kildare in their last outing, they outscored the Lilywhites by 0-14 to 0-3 during a 20-minute spell.

That period highlighted what the team is capable of, but going up against the All-Ireland champions on Saturday, they know they need much more than just glimpses.

“We more or less knew from the Sligo game we were relegated,” McBride reflected at the launch of the Ulster Championship.

“We’re up now, and now it’s time for the Armagh match. The first half (against Kildare) was very promising and shows that maybe if we could play like that again in three weeks, we could be a lot better. 

“It’s (consistency) something to work on because it happened again (against Kildare). We were 6-0 down, leading by five at half-time. 

“We were down by six, back to three and then we ended up losing by eight or nine, so we need to learn how to manage those periods where the game can get away from us. Why did it take us to go 6-0 down before we ended up going five up?”

Antrim are heavy underdogs on Saturday and even the most optimistic of supporters will concede it will take something really special for their side to cause a seismic shock.

League tables don’t lie and next year, Antrim will be in the basement division while Armagh will compete in the top tier - a measure of where they sit in the grander scheme of things.

But then there is really nothing to lose for Antrim on Saturday as they get the opportunity to have a cut off the All-Ireland champions. 

There is no question they will approach this with a focus on damage limitation, but McBride insists that if they are to go down, they will go down swinging.

“I’m big into sports psychology, did a Masters in it, and you have to look at things like this as a challenge,” he stressed.

“You have to be realistic that we’re big underdogs, just got relegated to Division Four. This team (Armagh) is in Division One, All-Ireland champions, so to win this match, you have to have the best day of your life. Everything has to go according to plan to win a match like this.

“You can’t go out hoping you don’t get beat; you have to go out trying to win, wanting to achieve, looking at it as a challenge, rather than a threat of, like, what some people might think.

“You will always hear: ‘Would you try and keep a scoreline to a certain amount?’ I would never think like that and Andy (McEntee, manager) isn’t thinking like that, so we have to make sure all our players are on the same hymn sheet and we all look at this as an exciting challenge.”

McBride was front and centre when it came to outlining the squad’s stance on the ‘Corrigan or Nowhere’ saga which was the dominant theme of this quarter-final for a number of weeks until the Ulster Council refixed the game for the West Belfast venue having initially set it for Newry based on concerns over safety.

But that sideshow is now in the past with the game the only concern for McBride and his teammates for the past three weeks.

In fact, the St John’s clubman insisted the whole furore was background noise the entire time as they were only thinking about their League campaign and with that ending in tandem with the venue saga being resolved, all the energy has gone into taking on the Orchard.

“There was no distraction around the venue because the league was so important,” he insisted.

“Like, the league was more important to us than the Championship, because you have to improve, you need to get up to the divisions, for when we play a team that’s just won an All-Ireland Championship. 

“It was important for us to get that venue, but now the importance is on the game - nothing to do with the venue for us anymore - because as far as we’re concerned, it’s where it should have been anyway.”