While we muse on the fate of our hurlers - whose form and status is surely somewhere in the middle of where the doom merchants have us, and the inappropriately over optimistic Dinny has us - and await the final round of football league matches, let's look back at what I think was the last time we played Wexford in a league game.
I'll get off to a poor start here because I can't remember the exact date, or for that matter the year. At times like this I wish I had picked up my Dad's habit of collecting and saving the programme from every match he was at. I suspect the year was towards the end of the 1980's and, like this weekend, it was an away fixture which was set to have a bearing on that year's promotion race. The league record of Antrim teams from that era was quite positive, although always and rightly overshadowed by perennial failure in the championship. We were good then - and the team of that era included players like Lenny Harbinson, Stephen Mulvenna, Chris Murphy, Paul McErlean, Enda McAtamney, Locky McCurdy amongst others.
The team reached a national league quarter final which was lost famously to Kerry in Croke Park in 1989 (surely some sort of 'wonder year' for Saffron fans?) and I think the match against the model county was in or around that era. In the late 80's we also had notable league victories against Mayo and Meath in Casement, and I think we went through one league season unbeaten only to fall in a promotion play off against Tyrone. Good times, good days out and a good team too.
A few of us hardy souls headed down to the Wexford game, which formed the centrepiece of a Sunday Tribune article on the fortunes of Antrim and team manager Eamonn Grieve. The journalist noted those at the majority of support amongst the sparse crowd came from Antrim. The feature concluded with the suggestion that Antrim were on the verge of making a Championship breakthrough. Unfortunately that turned out to be a decade early and indeed on the day we lost the Wexford game, by a narrow margin and like many other games involving the Saffrons it was one we could have won.
Back to the present day and the possible permutations of this weekend have received plenty of column inches and unfortunately much of it is incorrect. The Irish Times, the GAA's official website and the A'Town News all have Antrim promoted already - we would like to think that is the case but it is not official yet. Quite simply a win or draw means we are up no matter other results. Should Sligo fail to beat Roscommon (already relegated) then we are up no matter how we fare against the model county. If the Yeatsmen win then we will be promoted so long as we don't fall to a 11+ points defeat - and indeed in those circumstances Sligo would need a similar scale win to deprive us of our second successive promotion.
However all of this should be academic. The present Antrim team is capable of turning in a performance which will account for Wexford and leave them battling for second spot. Our team has come too far and is simply too good to leave promotion behind at this stage. Still, radios at the ready.
No teams news yet - but it is hard to see wholesale changes from the team which dismantled Louth.
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