Paddy Cunningham drove past Casement Park earlier this week to the pleasant sight of a demolition crew at work inside the ground, removing the existing structure. There’s hope once more within Antrim GAA that they can soon have a place where they can call home again.
Hope has been in short supply in the Saffron County in the decade and more that the gates of Casement have been padlocked. Indeed, how the once-proud ground has been allowed to crumble into disrepair serves as a fitting, if unfortunate, metaphor for the shabby state of its county teams.
Grounds for pessimism: The once-proud Casement Park is a sad reminder of what it once was
This weekend, Antrim footballers head to Carrick-on-Shannon, sitting rock-bottom of the national league, 31 counties above them. The situation is just as stark for Davy Fitzgerald’s hurlers, yet to pick up a point up in Division 1B after three games, staring at the ignominy of dropping into the third tier ahead of Carlow visiting Dunloy.
The way that the ambitious – some might say overly ambitious – redevelopment of Casement Park was halted before efforts to get it back off the ground were stalled and delayed and stalled again, generally because of local politics, underlined how tough it can be for Antrim GAA in their own environment.
Unhappy: A protest banner on display at an Antrim club game in Corrigan Park
The rows over Casement were so polarising that the two sides couldn’t even find common ground to ensure it was built for Euro 2028, which meant Northern Ireland missed out on co-hosting the tournament. A state of affairs that only made sense to some of the smaller-minded representatives in Stormont.
But while plans for the ground were shelved, and then kicked around like a football by politicians desperate to look important, Gaelic Games in Antrim has suffered. Without a focal point, somewhere to call home, their county sides were always going to drift.
‘Growing up, Casement Park was the meeting point for people in West Belfast,’ says Cunningham, a talented forward with a wand of a left foot who fought the good fight for Saffron footballers for 15 years.
Stalwart: Paddy Cunningham in action for the Antrim footballers in 2014
‘From the time that I was 12 or even younger, if the lights were on in Casement, you went up and watched a game, or went up with a football or hurley. A whole generation of young players have missed out on that, and they have missed out on the feeling that you got running out there with a huge crowd on a big day, onto what I thought was one of the best playing surfaces in the country.
‘My own son is 14 now and on county development squads. But for young boys and girls around his age, what will it mean playing for a county? How can it have an identity if it doesn’t have a home,’ Cunningham points out.
In his day job as a teacher at St Mary’s Grammar school in West Belfast, Cunningham has seen the effect on the ground. Gaelic Games is competing with other sports, primarily soccer, and is losing the battle for young hearts and minds.
The six-mile radius around West Belfast that encompasses the Falls Road and Anderstown famously has the highest concentration of GAA clubs on the island, with roughly a dozen trying to eke out an existence here, although there has been calls for some of them to merge. But most of the leading Irish League clubs are also based in Belfast and Antrim GAA is losing out because of it.
‘If you are a talented Gaelic footballer or hurler, you tend to be a talented soccer player, too. And we have a lot of Irish league sides in the city, the likes of Cliftonville, Glentoran, Crusaders, Linfield. If a young lad has to make a choice, what are they going to choose?’ Cunningham wonders.
Missing talent: Matthew Fitzpatrick playing professional soccer for Linfield
‘Matthew Fitzpatrick, someone who Antrim footballers could build the attack around, is playing with Linfield. And why wouldn’t he? Professional contract, top facilities. Hard to compete with that, especially when we have no home ground.’
The Gaelfast initiative was launched back in 2018 by then-GAA President John Horan. It was hoped that widespread investment in coaching and under-age development would stop the second biggest city on the island from turning into a Gaelic Games wasteland.
And while they have made some inroads in parts of the city that had little or no Gaelic Games history – the development of the East Belfast club has been a rare success story for Antrim in recent years – it feels like Gaelfast hasn’t had much effect on the traditional stronghold in the west of the city. And that’s a much bigger concern.
Dreams: GAA president Jarlath Burns addressing Congress last year
Given that they green-lighted the Gaelfast initiative, there is an acknowledgment within Croke Park that they need to tackle the wider malaise in Antrim GAA. The way that Dublin was transformed into a juggernaut by investment in underage development and coaching has been suggested as a way forward. But much of the success in the capital came from getting both clubs and schools to buy in and there’s a sense that has yet to happen in Belfast – although Covid also hampered any momentum that Gaelfast was able to generate.
Groups like Saffron Business forum and Club Aontroma have worked hard to raise funds for the county and they helped to ensure that the doors to the Centre of Excellence in Dunsilly were finally opened a couple of years ago, which at least give teams a base to do gym and strength & conditioning work even if they still have nowhere to call home. The county board also unveiled an ambitious five-year strategic plan in December 2024 that set out ways of harnessing a population that is second only to Dublin.
There was a glimpse last April of how powerful a force Antrim GAA could be if it all stood together. When the Ulster Council threatened to move their home championship game against Armagh out of Corrigan Park because of capacity issues, the whole county was defiant and refused to move. It was a rare occasion when there was an united front for Gaelic Games locally and it had the desired effect.
The reigning All-Ireland champions came to West Belfast and there was a festive air. Cunningham, who was working for BBC at the game, felt it was another peek at the potential that needs to be harnessed within the county.
Passion: Antrim fans look on as the county hurlers take on Clare last month
‘There was a great buzz around the game and we put it up to the All-Ireland champions in the first-half, which again makes you wonder how pretty much the same personnel are now sitting rock-bottom in Division four. But you had young kids coming to a game wearing Antrim shirts and that is what we need if we are going to re-discover our identity.’
Even though the Stormont finance minister John O’Dowd, who is from Sinn Fein, recently pledged £100 million to Casement project, there have been so many false dawns and empty promises on its redevelopment that nobody is too confident that will materialise.
Whether their home gets rebuilt is out of their hands, but the Gaels of Antrim need to come together and get themselves out of this deep hole. Cunningham feels that a strategic review of under-age structures is needed to see why they have fallen so far behind.
They have been so badly let down by others time and again, that as a county, it is time that Antrim start helping themselves.
