Casement Park deserved a better way to say goodbye

Monaghan 0-11 Antrim 0-6: The old girl deserved better. In what was most likely Casement Park's last Ulster championship match before it is demolished later this year, Antrim and Monaghan toiled in the sun and failed to toast the occasion with anything resembling a decent football championship match.

Monaghan kicked more wides (17) than points on a day when none of their star performers came out to play.

Malachy O’Rourke summed it up best when he said: “We won’t have scared anyone today.”

But the dour struggle had a lot to do with Antrim’s defensive strategy which appeared to be a damage limitation exercise from the word go.

Frank Dawson, in his first championship match in charge of the Saffrons, elected to persist with Mark Sweeney as a sweeper even though they had an extra man for most of the second half.

When Neil McAdam was sent-off for an innocuous looking second yellow card offence in the 39th minute, Antrim should have taken it as a signal to push on.

They’d fought back after a poor opening quarter and should have went for broke.

Set-back
Instead, it was Monaghan who reacted best to the setback.

On a day when scores seemed to be hard to come by, the visitors reeled off three unanswered points in the 10 minutes after McAdam’s red card to effectively close out the game.

O’Rourke, desperately searching for positives, was delighted with their response.

“The sending-off injected more purpose into our play,” he said. “We needed a spark to get us going again and that’s probably what happened.

“It seemed fairly harsh anyway, but that was pleasing that the boys were able to put a bit of daylight between them.”

Conor McManus, Paul Finlay, Owen Duffy and Christopher McGuinness were frustrated figures, starved of room to operate in, though the latter did score a point in each half from play.

Monaghan were five points to one up after 21 minutes, Darren Hughes, Owen Duffy and Conor McManus all scoring from play, and the result already looked a formality.

Maybe the Monaghan players thought so too because they endured their worst spell of the game, completely fading out of the match in the second quarter.

Antrim capitalised on Monaghan’s lethargy and got themselves back into the game with three unanswered points to trail by just 0-5 to 0-4 at the break.

Paddy Cunningham’s free drew them level immediately after the restart – but the sending-off of Neil McAdam hurt Antrim more.

Suddenly there was renewed vigour and appetite about Monaghan.

The introduction of Drew Wylie at full back had a big impact and as the Monaghan defenders pressed up a lot harder on Antrim’s packed defence, Wylie was one of the men forcing the turnovers.

Complacency
O'Rourke agreed that complacency may have been an issue. "The performance wasn't what we wanted, but we had one objective and that was to come here and win. We know we need to improve a lot if we want to go further in the competition."

Antrim boss Frank Dawson was unrepentant about his defensive strategy.“We spent the last nine weeks trying to turn around what everyone was telling us was the dismal state of Antrim football.

“People thought we’d get beaten by 20 points. Some people wondered why the Ulster Council were even bothering to have a game today.

“We restored pride in the jersey and our championship season is not over.”

ANTRIM: C Kerr; K O'Boyle, R Johnson, A McClean; S Kelly, J Crozier, P McBride; S McVeigh (0-2), M Johnson; A Healy, K Niblock (0-2, 1f), M Sweeney; M Pollock (0-1, f), P Cunningham (0-1, f), B Herron. Subs: C Murray for Herron (30), M Herron for Niblock (ht), R Murray for Cunningham (53), J Carron for McClean (57), P Doherty for M Johnson (65). Yellow cards: K Niblock (28mins), S McVeigh (52mins)
MONAGHAN: R Beggan; K Duffy, F Kelly, C Walshe; D Mone (0-1), N McAdam, V Corey; O Lennon, D Hughes (0-1); P Finlay (0-1, f), D Clerkin, O Duffy (0-1); C McGuinness (0-2), K Hughes, C McManus (0-4, 3f). Subs: S Gallogly for Clerkin (42), D Wylie for Kelly (45), T Freeman (0-1) for O Duffy (49), J McCarron for Finlay (64), P Donaghy for K Hughes (70). Yellow cards: N McAdam (28mins), C McGuinness (34mins), N McAdam (39mins), K Hughes (51mins). Red card: N McAdam (39mins).
Attendance: 7,713.
Referee: David Gough (Meath).