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Antrim manager Andy McEntee is not impressed by changes to the championship structure Lorraine O’Sullivan/INPHO
Ulster Championship

'I’ve made no secret of the fact that the provincial system just doesn’t make sense'

Saffrons have been hit with an injury crisis.

A FEW DAYS out from Antrim getting their Ulster championship campaign up and running by travelling to Armagh’s Box-It Athletic Grounds, and Saffrons manager Andy McEntee is not convinced about the early start.

This is the earliest All-Ireland championship since the early years of the GAA when the series would regularly cross into other years, but in living memory, nobody can recall an early April start.

“Ah, I don’t agree with it. I voiced this before. The split season is all fine. But even if you just think of it as a player, say you pull a hamstring, you’re gone for six to eight weeks,” the former Meath manager points out.

“That could be your championship gone. This whole idea of not being allowed to train collectively before a certain a date and then you’re throwing games at amateur players….

“I mean, you’re asking them to play McKenna Cup, three games in the space of ten days, and then national league; seven games in the space of nine weeks. “We turn around then and we have 15 out of 37 guys injured. And it’s not just us. Heavy pitches and the wrong time of the year.”

On Sunday during the presentation for the division 1 league title to Mayo, GAA President Larry McCarthy warned the ‘critics collective’ to reserve judgement on  the split season, and to give it time to bed in, but those injury statistics are alarming.

From his own personal experience of working with a county team and having been in this sphere since August 2016, McEntee feels the balance is wrong.

“I’m not so sure…everybody talks about the split season being good for clubs – that’s certainly not the feedback I’m getting,” he states.

“An awful lot of clubs are finding themselves with games in the middle of summer and players are heading off to America. Championship is not going to start until September. So the league programmes in a lot of counties are not what they were.

“I even feel financially, we’ve shot ourselves in the foot. We have prime viewing in June, July and August. No soccer, give or take. No rugby. “That was GAA time. We’ve given it away. It doesn’t make sense to me. You’ve a captive audience at that time of year and we’ve given it away.”

After a league campaign when McEntee watched the good, bad and frankly baffling, he believes Antrim are still in a good place. They were in leading positions against Fermanagh – eight points up with 20 minutes to go – and Down in the closing stages.  

But they followed that up with a 31-point loss to Westmeath, before finishing the league by beating the eventual league winners Cavan before a losing to relegated Longford in their only win of the league. Added to that, they are coming up against an Armagh side feeling smartened by relegation from Division One.

“You’re after poking the bear a bit. Look, playing Armagh, you see where they got to last year and they were within a penalty shoot-out of progressing even further,” he said.

“That’s the magnitude of the challenge we face. Division 1 or division 2, it’s still a great challenge.”

With the change of the format of the All-Ireland and Tailteann Cup series after the provincial championships are settled, this is McEntee’s first time in Ulster, but he is insistent that the provinces have less worth now than ever.

“I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think the provincial system just doesn’t make sense. But I can understand why Ulster doesn’t want to change, because it’s the one province that isn’t broken,” he explained.

“You look at some of the Ulster championship games over the years, there’s great rivalry there. And there’s a spread of counties that can actually win it.

“Derry and Monaghan, Cavan, Donegal, Tyrone, Armagh. Fermanagh had a really good run too. You’d have to look at Ulster and say that’s the one province that isn’t broken.

“Unfortunately the rest of them are. Even the numbers things…if you took someone from outer space and tried to explain how this thing works, with 32 counties, they’d look and you and go, ‘really?’

“You see now what has happened with the draw in Connacht. It doesn’t make sense. You’re going to get a Division 4 team playing in the championship at the expense of a Division 2 team. That doesn’t make sense.”

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