Antrim Senior Football Championship
NAOMH ÉANNA captain Peter Healy says their blooding of a host of young prospects in the league has stood to them as they hit the ground running in the Antrim Senior Football Championship last weekend.
The Glengormley men got their campaign in Group Three off to the best possible start last Sunday when they beat Lámh Dhearg by 1-14 to 1-10 at Hightown. It followed a league campaign in the early summer where they were without their county contingent but managed to retain their Division One status with a promising group of young players.
“It was good to get our foot in the door early on,” said Healy of Sunday’s opening day victory over the team from Hannahstown.
“We didn’t have too bad a league, we didn’t get hammered by too many teams. When we played Lámh Dhearg it was a tight game which we ended up losing and you could see the progress we’ve made since out there on Sunday.
“Having no county players for the league was actually good for us. For a lot of the young players it was a chance for them to get game time. Some of the lads who had not got pile of minutes before that, more or less played every game in league and we seen how much they came on.
“While people were saying it was going to be tough playing without the county players, Carl [McCabe, Naomh Éanna manager] was rubbing his hands because we have 20 or 30 young players coming through this year, whereas previously we would have found it tough to put out a reserve team.”
Healy believes Naomh Éanna proved a point against Lámh Dhearg but he is also determined that laying a solitary big name low won’t be the highlight of the Hightown club’s campaign as they prepare to take on Aghagallon this Friday.
“I think we were 11/4 to win going into the Lámh Dhearg game and Paddy Power has us at 33/1 to win the whole thing,” he added.
“Now, we’re not saying we’re going to win the Antrim championship, but we’re not that bad. It was nice to prove a point and show that we’re there or thereabouts.
“When we beat St Gall’s last year, we kind of stagnated a bit, as if we’d prove a point and it wasn’t a season to remember in the end. We’ve a good young team and we’re putting the building blocks in place. We won’t be satisfied with just beating one big team every year. We want to go a step further.”
