THERE isn’t a more eloquent communicator currently in the GAA than Neil McManus. He’s always had a good, clear eye on the important stuff. For the last 10 years, the Antrim hurlers have made a good home out of Corrigan Park.
For McManus, there was always a bigger narrative than trying to bank two Division 1B points on any given Sunday.
“You grow up with your passions, generally,” McManus said.
“Every one of the kids that come through the gates of Corrigan Park hopefully will leave wanting to be a player on the field at some point in the future – and that’s the thought we’re trying to leave them with.”
Lighting the fire in children with hurls the size of large spoons has always been one of the main objectives of an inter-county senior team.
Late on Wednesday night, the Antrim County Board announced Davy Fitzgerald’s backroom team.
McManus was announced as the senior team’s sports performance coach.
If the Cushendall man is going to be out of the house as much as he was during his playing days, he might as well put the helmet back on and dust off his inter-county hurl as he would still have something to offer his county.
It’s also true Davy Fitz has an infectious personality. He’s his own man too.
In an interview with The Irish News earlier this week, it was clearly his decision to walk away from the Waterford job after just two years at the helm.
Put simply, he wasn’t feeling the love there. The abuse got a bit thick too.
Before accepting the Antrim gig, Fitzgerald spoke with his wife Sharon.
“The experience she had in Wexford was off-the-charts good,” he said.
“Waterford would have been tougher because we lost a few league games by a point or two.
“In Waterford, you’ve to win every game, which is next to impossible…
“She probably never got the same experience in Waterford [as Wexford]. I said to Sharon that I really believe the people of Antrim are different.
“If you lose a game, they won’t be at your throat every two seconds; they’re not that kind of people.”
It’s a fair bet Antrim Gaels will love Davy Fitzgerald. He’s passionate, he’s a lateral thinker and a winner.
The Antrim players must be prepared for what’s coming down the tracks too.
“Am I going to ask the Antrim players to go to places they haven’t gone before? Yeah. But they’ll get back a lot too, I can promise them that.”
Darren Gleeson parted ways with Antrim only a few weeks earlier before Davy Fitz appeared on the county board’s radar.
Gleeson wasn’t to everyone’s taste - but he did a brilliant job over the five years he was Antrim manager.
Only the senior players that were there know the amount of effort it took just to stay in Division 1B and indeed the Leinster SHC – bar one Championship relegation during COVID.
There were serious dips in form along the way – but Gleeson was working off a small enough pool of players.
His last season was a bit of a basket case and perhaps showed the brittle nature of trying to build anything sustainable when Antrim is so far removed from the bluebloods of hurling.
On the same weekend in March, Antrim’s U20s were losing to Derry in an Ulster final, Gleeson could only name 21 senior players for a Division 1B game in Westmeath – five short of a full match-day squad.
The seniors lost that day too but were saved from relegation due to a rejig of the hurling leagues.
There was the overwhelming sense that Gleeson squeezed out what was in the current squad.
Fitzgerald is coming along and will want to squeeze that same orange.
This is where the split season flogs the inter-county player a little bit more than it should be allowed to.
The main aim for Fitzgerald is to claim third spot in the Leinster SHC round robin series and give the All-Ireland knock-out stages a crack.
When you speak to Davy Fitzgerald for any length of time, you come away believing that anything is possible.
But while the higher echelons of Antrim GAA are all singing and all dancing about the appointment of a hurling legend, and it promises to be an exciting period, will the county be any further on in, say, three years’ time?
Which is probably the time-line Fitzgerald gives himself in Antrim.
Will the hurling underbelly in Belfast be in the same state?
While there is serious investment being funnelled towards the senior team, are we likely to see the same energy and ambition applied to raising standards in the city and increasing the numbers of Belfast players in future senior teams?
The city is Antrim GAA’s biggest problem and is a big part of any solution.
It goes without saying that Belfast clubs must help themselves to raising standards – but we must see hard evidence that initiatives such as ‘Gaelfast’ are yielding results.
No-one is doubting the unstinting efforts of the coaches themselves who are employed by ‘Gaelfast’ - but are there enough of them? Are they in the right areas? Are they being utilised properly?
Are some schools just ticking a box and the hurls put in the store room until the next time a ‘Gaelfast’ coach shows up?
Although it had a global pandemic to contend with, has the scheme fulfilled the key points of its mission statement when launched at Belfast City Hall in 2018?
‘Gaelfast’, at least in its many previous incarnations, hasn’t yet delivered for Belfast nor Antrim as a whole.
Schemes like ‘Gaelfast’ don’t set the pulses racing quite like Davy Fitzgerald’s appointment as Antrim’s new senior manager does - but it’s the starting point of any vision worth its salt.
There are no guarantees but there’s a good chance the kids with hurls the size of large spoons who turn up to Corrigan Park next spring to watch Davy Fitzgerald’s Antrim team will be suitably inspired.
But they need a place to go after that. They need nurtured, they need coaching structures, a platform and a defined pathway - so that more of them are on the hurling field in future years wearing saffron because north Antrim can’t keep doing it alone.