Anyone who thought up to now that Dinny Cahill's committment to coaching Antrim could be measured in road miles (171 miles round trip from home to Belfast) can now think on, when Dinny arrives home, his right hand man and physical coaching Bobby Thornhill has an additional 70 odd miles to go. Hopefully our hurlers will take inspiration from that level of committment.
Tomorrow the national hurling league Division 2 campaign begins at home to Carlow. If we want to measure where exactly we stand, Carlow offer a good yardstick. In 2006 we brushed them aside in the Christy Ring Final, in 2009 fortunes had reversed far enough that they beat us in the league. Tomorrow they travel to Antrim HQ with confidence bolstered by a Walsh Cup Shield win over the Saffrons last weekend. In the NHL last year our opening home game against Wexford provided the highlight of the Casement action for the year (remember all of our football champsionship games were away from home) when our hurlers recovered from an appalling start to run out winners after the mother and father of all comebacks. The hurlers were cheered off the pitch that day, and to be honest, that was as good as 2009 got.
The current squad is an interesting one. We will be missing the St Galls hurlers for at least this opening game and the Dunloy contingent are not due back until next weekend at the earliest. We are likely to see the return of Johnny McIntosh and Liam Watson at some stage and between them and Eddie McCLoskey we will gets scores.
Carlow have improved, no doubt. Will Antrim? We should begin to learn the answer to that questino tomorrow.
A Saffron win - by 4 or 5 points.
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