THE next 64 days are very important for Antrim footballers.
When the draw for the 2025 Ulster championship was made, Antrim were pulled out at home to All-Ireland champions Armagh.
As far as their hopes of a rare run in the provincial championship went, they ended in that moment.
Antrim will not beat Armagh.
But it’s bigger than the result now.
Andy McEntee has to view this as a chance to really galvanise not just the players in front of him but the county behind them.
They can use it to fuel their whole year.
Would Ulster Council treat any other county the way they have treated Antrim?
Two years ago, they had to fight to wrestle back home advantage for their championship game with Cavan.
The only hitch was that after all of it, Antrim were woefully insipid that day.
It felt like an opportunity to plant a flag but Cavan walked through them.
If Antrim do fight this out and get the game in Corrigan, that cannot happen again.
In 2019, they were made to host Tyrone in the Athletic Grounds. All of this would be fine if it had been exclusively an Antrim decision to close Casement Park 14 years ago.
But it was not.
They are being punished for the mistakes not just of others, but the body that is trying to take the right to a home game off them.
Home advantage is sacrosanct in the Ulster championship.
The last time it was willingly conceded was 16 years ago, when Tyrone agreed to play Armagh in Clones.
The difference there was that the initial idea was to take the clash between the then-All-Ireland champions and their rivals, who were reigning Ulster champions, to Croke Park.
Ulster Council ruled that out but took the game to St Tiernach’s Park and agreed to compensate Tyrone for the loss of ground rent they’d have been due for hosting it in Omagh.
Neither side minded.
The Antrim team might feel pretty let down by the boardroom.
But it’s all wood for the fire now.
The first line of an Ulster GAA statement about the decision to strip them of home advantage cites their failure to comply with “health and safety standards”.
There is no bigger red flag when it comes to a GAA decision than playing the health-and-safety card.
It’s the same one they used to introduce a £5 charge on U16s attending all league games this year, when a nominal ticket at 10p would have been the solution had it actually been a health and safety decision.
It was ‘health and safety’ when Kildare weren’t going to be allowed to play Mayo at home in 2018.
‘Newbridge or Nowhere’ took hold and crucially, Kildare took the good out of it. They got angry, packed the place out, and won.
If health and safety was an issue for Corrigan Park, it would not be hosting Kilkenny and Dublin in the Leinster SHC, or Waterford in the League in a fortnight’s time.
They hosted and beat Wexford last summer in the day that showed best what the place could be for Antrim on the right occasion.
When Donegal owned Sam Maguire in the spring of 2013, attempts were made to wrestle their championship opener against Tyrone out of Ballybofey.
Threatened with the health-and-safety card, Donegal opened their wallet and tidied the place up a bit. It was nothing significant.
Donegal had enough self-respect that they wouldn’t have stood for it.
You can take this to the bank: If anyone had gone to the point of telling Donegal they couldn’t play that game at home, they would not have played it.
They would have made a stand like Antrim’s.
Donegal would have stuck to it.
Will Antrim?
That is the big question now.
This comes down to two issues, neither of which are Antrim’s fault.
The first is capacity, which in turn is money.
Ulster Council, having already lost the McKenna Cup, cannot conceive the idea of missing out on a decent gate from the All-Ireland champions’ first defence of their title.
Secondly, the GAA has over-promised on its season tickets.
Guaranteeing tickets for games in a championship where home-and-away is a staple part of the diet is something they cannot sell.
Supply and demand doesn’t cut an argument against Antrim’s right to be at home.
When Tamworth hosted Tottenham in the FA Cup last month, the capacity of their home ground was 3,720.
They could have sold thousands more.
So they did what you do in that situation. They made it the hottest ticket in town, packed the place out, and turned it into an unforgettable occasion for an underdog that took it to extra-time before running out of steam.
Taking the game off Antrim is the very opposite of what the GAA should be doing.
It is a marketing dream.
The second biggest city on the island, one where we’re told Casement Park will sell the dream, is hosting the All-Ireland champions for their first game as holders?
It’s a game to sell to the Antrim public, an opportunity to engage a population that we hear all the time needs to be engaged with.
The GAA cannot hand a walkover to Armagh in a championship game over something that they have had more control of than Antrim have.
If Antrim stare at Ulster Council long enough, they will break them.
All they have to do is stand their ground from here and they cannot lose.
64 days from now, if they are not either hosting Armagh in Corrigan Park or walking out on to an empty field in protest, Antrim will have no credibility left.
They’ve stated what they will do.
They can afford to lose the match to Armagh. Nobody expects anything different.
But if they lie down in the boardroom, they won’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to getting a home championship game until Casement Park is rebuilt, if that ever happens.
This is Antrim’s home game.
They have to follow their words with the action they said they would take.