EX-ANTRIM assistant Brendan Trainor says that the management team, led by Lenny Harbinson, decided to step aside last season due to a lack tangible success during their three years in charge.

Trainor, who is taking on a new role as manager of his native Augher in Tyrone, says that Harbinson would likely have come back for another year had they achieved promotion from Division Four.

However, for the third year running they narrowly missed out on a promotion berth, and it was decided to pass on the baton to a new management team.

“I always said to myself, that after two years with a team, if you’ve nothing to show for it in terms of silverware or promotion, then it’s time to move on because things can get stale. If you’re not winning it can be difficult to hold fellas’ attention.

“We’d done two years and the feedback from the players was that they really wanted us to stay on and give it another lash, so we gave it another year.

“We were going well before the lockdown, we beat the league leaders Limerick, but we never seemed to get that momentum back again when we came back.

“Two or three challenge games fell by the wayside and we were chinned by Wicklow. If we’d been promoted we’d have looked to a new season but with results not going our way we thought it’d be better to expose the players to a new set-up.”