Ciarán Murphy: Antrim fully entitled to home comfort for Cavan clash

At an Ulster Council meeting last week, a motion brought by Cavan’s representatives to move their Ulster football championship quarter-final tie against Antrim out of Corrigan Park in Belfast was passed, with six out of the nine counties voting in favour.

Antrim were understandably one of the three dissenting voices, along with Tyrone and Derry, and since their name was pulled first out of the hat when the draw was made originally, they had and have every right to expect home advantage.

The argument is that Corrigan Park can only hold 3,700 people, and that that is not sufficient for an Ulster championship game.

If Antrim were not currently engaged in a decade-long battle to get Casement Park redeveloped; if they hadn’t already spent £1 million bringing Corrigan Park up to scratch last year; in short, if they hadn’t been doing everything in their power for the last nine years since their last home Ulster championship game to provide a venue fit for intercounty purpose, it would still be the right decision for Corrigan Park to hold this game.

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Which begs the question where this sudden desire to move the game comes from. It is honestly a tale as old as time – a provincial council putting the idea of a couple of thousand extra tickets being sold ahead of basic competitive fairness.

This is a surprisingly resilient opinion among GAA people – that home advantage doesn't actually count for that much

It’s why Dublin didn’t play a game at the home ground of an opponent in the Leinster championship for 15 years, even while they reduced competition in the province to rubble, until last year’s game against Wexford in Wexford Park.

There should be no doubt these kinds of decisions are absolutely a part of people’s thinking when they say the provincial councils are a part of the problem, not a part of the solution to any of the GAA’s problems.

Antrim did nothing wrong, and yet they were expected to roll over and allow this game to be moved to the Athletic Grounds in Armagh, or wherever, just to sell a couple of thousand extra tickets.

And let us not be under any illusions that Division 4’s Cavan are the greatest show on turf. If there are 5,000 people out there willing to go to this game, then that strikes me as a pretty bloody good crowd.

It shouldn’t perhaps come as that much of a shock to see Colm O’Rourke, on RTÉ’s League Sunday programme last weekend, putting the rights of Cavan football supporters to attend a game ahead of the rights of Antrim footballers to take whatever advantage the draw gave them in an attempt to win a first Ulster football championship game since 2014.

This is a surprisingly resilient opinion among GAA people – that home advantage doesn’t actually count for that much. It’s there whenever Dublin playing their home games in Croke Park comes up, it was there a few weeks ago when Cork themselves tried to put a positive spin on their championship games being moved out of Páirc Uí Chaoimh to facilitate Ed Sheeran concerts.

Major blow

Home advantage matters. And the smaller and more inconvenient your ground is, the more it matters. Cavan will not particularly enjoy going to Corrigan Park, if the struggles the Waterford hurlers suffered during their trip up there a few weeks ago is anything to go by.

If the choice was between selling 3,700 tickets and selling 37,000 tickets, then maybe the Ulster Council’s stance would make financial, if not competitive, sense. But to so clearly show your motivations for the sake of a couple of thousand tickets is quite dispiriting.

The absence of a redeveloped Casement Park in Belfast has been a major blow to GAA attempts to try and re-energise the games in Belfast City. This game is a chance to bring championship football back to the biggest city in Ulster, a PR opportunity that doesn’t come around all that often. Like the aforementioned visit of Austin Gleeson and Co a few weeks ago, nothing sells the games like the games.

And, make no mistake, this year Antrim have a team that are really rolling under Enda McGinley. They look increasingly well set for another promotion, having only gotten out of Division Four last year, and they are no one’s idea of a soft touch in the championship anymore, notwithstanding that eight-year wait for a victory in their province.

Antrim made their displeasure quite clear, and after a meeting of the Ulster Council on Wednesday night the decision was reversed. Perhaps it had something to do with Antrim suggesting they would pull out of the Ulster championship altogether rather than play the game elsewhere. It’s a situation similar to Kildare’s insistence they play Mayo in Newbridge in the 2018 All-Ireland qualifiers.

We remember how that worked out for Kildare, and for Mayo, and on that occasion the original decision to move the game out of Newbridge had nothing whatsoever to do with Mayo. They were simply caught in the crosshairs of the controversy.

Given Cavan instigated this particular furore, they can be assured of a full-blooded welcome in west Belfast after all.