ANTRIM hurling manager Darren Gleeson won’t disguise just how much is riding on the outcome of Sunday’s Leinster SHC relegation face-off with Westmeath as he sweats on a number of key players for the Mullingar trip.
Neil McManus, Eoghan Campbell, Conall Bohill, Gerard Walsh, Nigel Elliott, Seann Elliott and Phelim Duffin are all carrying serious enough injuries ahead of Sunday’s showdown, while Conor McCann and Ciaran Clarke are both long-term – but Gleeson says he can’t afford to get too hung up on the absentees.
“Look, that’s the hand your dealt,” said the Tipperary man, who completes his fourth season in charge this weekend.
“Conor McCann is one of the most under-rated players we have, a fantastic focal point of the attack, does so much for the team and Ciaran Clarke has been one of the most talented forwards in Ireland over the last 10 years.
“So, they are two significant blows. Westmeath have been without Killian Doyle, even my own county don’t have Barry Heffernan and Craig Morgan. Dublin have a few travelling.
“Galway don’t have David Burke. Limerick are without Sean Finn. Every county is going to be without a key player at times. I have to look past that.”
Gleeson added: “It’s two attritional campaigns running on top of one another, but thankfully we’ve good young players who have been stepping in and Daniel McKernan came back last week [against Galway] and did well. Niall McKenna has a couple of games under his belt now.
“But we’ve a couple of tight calls to make with the team sheet having to go in on Thursday morning to Croke Park. Are we going to risk an Eoghan Campbell or a Neil McManus at 80 per cent?”
Antrim started the most demanding of Championship campaigns with an encouraging draw against Dublin before falling to Wexford. They suffered chastening defeats to big hitters Kilkenny and Galway and now find themselves in a must-win scenario this weekend.
“It’s massively important for Antrim hurling, you can’t understate it. You hear in some quarters that you can’t have a Leinster Championship without Wexford.
“Well, if you’re bottom of the table that’s where you end up. No-one says that about Offaly or Laois. Carlow made a burst a few years ago and are back at it again. No-one said that about Carlow and certainly no-one’s going to say that about Antrim. The league table unfortunately doesn’t lie.
“Antrim needs to stay in the Leinster Championship and I’d go further again and say that Antrim minors and U20s need to be automatically in the Leinster Championship. That’s something, as a board, we need to go after, we need to get a permanent fixture in there and try to improve all standards of it.
“But we just have to try and use the talented group of players we have at the minute because they won’t be there forever.”
Westmeath will be seriously boosted by last week’s surprise home win over Wexford which means a draw is good enough for Joe Fortune’s men on Sunday while Wexford could find themselves relegated if they lose to Kilkenny and Antrim beat Westmeath.
“It’s a winner-takes-all game for both teams,” Gleeson said. “We have control of our own destiny.”
Despite finding themselves in this make-or-break situation, Gleeson insists there have been many positives buried in the defeats to date.
“I’ve been really happy with a lot of our play. Kilkenny and Galway are different levels but I would say in the games where we had chances to win – the Dublin and Wexford games – it was individual errors, it wasn’t that we were out-hurled or out-systemed or they had way better hurlers than us.
“The other side of it is we always tend to look at the negative part of our games, but we’ve had really good periods. The start against Dublin was fantastic and our reaction when Dublin drew level with us before they got the last score to level it.
“I thought our reaction after half-time down in Wexford was really good and I thought the first 25 minutes were really good against Galway because we’d a lot of guys making their first starts.
“Sometimes you feel you’re not getting the result that you think your performances deserve.”
