By Niall Gartland

GEARING up for county final day is a familiar feeling for Cargin – but it’s no less welcome for that acute sense of familiarity.

Cargin have won nine of the last 11 Antrim Senior Championship titles on offer, and on the other two occasions they didn’t reach the final so it’s quite evident that they know how to produce the goods on the big day.

They take on Portglenone in Sunday’s showdown and the dynamics couldn’t be much different. Portglenone are appearing in their first Antrim SFC final in 15 years, and they’ve never actually won the competition, but just because Cargin know it all like the back of their hand, it doesn’t mean there’s no sense of pre-final excitement.

Manager Ronan Devlin commented: “To be honest at this stage it would’ve been seen as a failure if we didn’t reach the final. We expect nothing less from ourselves, but it’s weird in a way, you think you’d get used to it but there’s still the same sense of excitement, and we keep saying you should never get sick of being in a county final.

“When you’re in the set-up, you can be a bit insulated but you look around and every time you walk past someone they want to talk about the final. We were training yesterday morning (Sunday) and the cherry-picker was going up the road, the local men were putting up the flags. It’s just great to be part of it.”

The defending champions overcame St Brigid’s in the semi-finals, a game that hit the spotlight for taking nearly 27 minutes to produce a score of any description. Devlin found himself irritated by some of the post-match discourse on social media.

“I’ve got to the stage where I think there are a number of people out there who I think just turn on football matches to get annoyed.

“I genuinely think there are people out there who love being annoyed and love telling people about it, and that’s the way the world’s going.

“From my perspective, I was annoyed we’d gone 25 minutes without scoring but it wasn’t by design. People think you’re anti-football and you’re this and you’re that, but we missed a goal chance early on which would’ve opened the whole thing up and we fluffed a few chances again.

“We could’ve gone in at half-time having scored about 1-3 against the breeze and we’d have been chuffed with that. People aren’t at a game and then they see a headline on Twitter and they can’t wait to comment on it as it confirms their pre-held biases.”

Cargin have been there, done that and bought the T-shirt but even though opponents Portglenone haven’t appeared in an Antrim SFC final since 2009, they’ve been knocking on the door and will be determined to seize the opportunity of landing the biggest prize in Antrim football.

Devlin said: “I imagine Portglenone were disappointed in recent years at missing out on finals, I suppose arguably they threw a couple away.

“I was at last year’s game against Aghagallon and I left because I thought it was over, then I heard the roar on the way out and thought what the hell had happened there, and it turned out that Portglenone had lost the game. And that wasn’t the first time either so they’ll feel they’re knocking on the door. Fair play to them for reaching the final, they’re there on merit and just like ourselves, I’m sure they’ll put everything they have into it.”