OVER the past month or so Dunsilly – Antrim GAA’s centre of excellence - has become something of a second home. It was a slow burner of a place, but you come to love it for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it’s only a few miles up the motorway and is so accessible.
Parking in the grounds itself is never a problem. And it’s completely free of jobsworths.
The stewards are there to assist rather than harangue and there’s always a friendly face at the turnstile – or more accurately, the arch under which you walk to get to the pitch.
Another major plus is that you’re within touching distance of the playing area which gives the spectator an authentic, unambiguous sense of just how hard modern Gaelic football is and how fit club players are these days.
Over the past week, I watched the Antrim SFC semi-finals at the Dunsilly venue – the first between Cargin and Creggan Kickhams as a spectator, and the second between Portglenone and Aghagallon as a reporter.
Even though the second semi-final had a more dramatic finish, I enjoyed the first game far more.
My thinking is basic on this because, when you've reported on Gaelic Games for over two decades there's a sense of liberation when you go to a match just to watch it and not be scribbling furiously into a dog-eared notepad.
Another thing I learned, not just last weekend but for a while now, is that I wouldn't referee a club championship match for a lucrative pension.
The vagaries surrounding the tackle in Gaelic Games makes a club referee's job nigh on impossible and there should also be some kind of hooter system, as in ladies football, to remove the onus from already stressed-out officials.
Right now, the conditions that a club referee operates in are bordering on anarchy - and that's before the ball is thrown up.
Watching last weekend's Antrim semi-finals, the style of football in both games was virtually identical.
It's formulaic and predictable.
You could quite literally head up to Dunsilly Hotel for the carvery, skip the first 45 minutes and return feeling you haven't missed a thing before a game of football breaks out in the last quarter.
Now, that's not to be critical of the coaches involved last weekend.
Given the terms of engagement of modern Gaelic football, that's just the way it is.
In fact, Creggan, Cargin, Aghagallon and Portglenone were all expertly coached.
Everything was precise, well thought out, two games that could almost have been played out on a chessboard.
But being expertly coached doesn't necessarily yield a good spectacle.
Pit two clever southpaw boxers against each another and they'll generally produce a technical bore-fest.
What supporters in Dunsilly got last weekend was two incredible finishes to two encounters that were compelling from start to finish, largely because of the high stakes involved.
If they were both mid-table league fixtures would the crowd have stayed to the end? Probably not. In all likelihood, they would have caught the final score - and scorers - on WhatsApp later that evening and been content to do so.
This, of course, is not the sole preserve of Antrim football. Many club championship games up and down the country look and feel the same.
So much of the game is risk-averse. Teams expend so much energy for just one shot at the opponents' goalposts.
A team could string together 30 passes without testing their shooting radar.
Surely, you think, there must be an easier, less nuanced way of getting a shot off.
Of course, we can afford these luxurious thoughts from behind the wire or when we're scribbling furious into our notepads.
Try being inside the wire and breaking that cycle where possession of the ball has unashamedly become 10-tenths of the law.
At half-time of the Portglenone-Aghagallon match, I was chatting briefly to Kieran McGourty who was on co-commentary with Jerome Quinn above in the temporary gantry.
McGourty enjoyed a hugely successful career with St Gall's, winning numerous titles at county, provincial and national level.
While openly acknowledging that people are sometimes guilty of waxing lyrical about their own era, he wondered aloud about where all the game-changers had gone.
You could turn up to a St Gall's versus Cargin game of 10 years ago and a different player would step up and make the difference on the scoreboard.
Many of those players have been coached out of the game now and replaced by a different, risk-free footballer who's first instinct is to perhaps go sideways with the ball.
Nevertheless, there are some celebrated examples of players who still offer the modern game redemption.
Ruairi McCann has been exceptional for Creggan this season - a player of peerless guile and shooting ability who fully believes he will impact a championship game at some point.
It's not easy to stand out in this era. And you often wonder what Ruairi McCann's market value would have been, say, 10 or 15 years ago when Gaelic football was tactically looser.
But it was his namesake Tomas McCann who proved the difference in last Saturday's semi-final between two neighbours.
The veteran Cargin forward wasn't fit to start because of an ankle injury but when he was introduced in the 44th minute he reminded spectators that quality individuals like him can still be the difference on the big days.
McCann made runs and decisions in the minutes he was on the field that others wouldn't have made.
His winning point was a perfect example of taking responsibility.
Receiving the ball on his weaker left foot, 9 players out of 10 wouldn't have chanced shooting and fist passed it on.
The following evening Adam Loughran was another glowing reminder that the marquee forward might be a dying breed, but they still exist.
Bottled up for the first 40-45 minutes by the Portglenone defence, Loughran showed incredible resilience to stay in the game - and skill when he struck the winner on the outer edges of extra-time.
It'll be interesting to see if Loughran plays inter-county in 2023 because that's where his talent demands he should be.
What Tomas McCann and Adam Loughran have is uncoachable ability, wonderfully decisive players - and it's far too late to change them.
Long may these kinds of players inhabit our game and fire the collective imagination of the next generation.
