Joe McDonagh Cup final

Antrim v Kerry

Saturday, Croke Park, 4.30pm

By Michael McMullan

RYAN Elliott is surrounded by goalkeeping, both at home and inside Antrim’s Joe McDonagh Cup searching bubble.

The Antrim goalkeeper is the picture of calmness. Ten days out from Saturday’s Croke Park showdown with Kerry, he’s seated in the dressing room at the team’s base in Dunsilly.

He was only a toddler when his father Shane, a former Antrim netminder, was in the firing line as Dunloy came agonisingly close to hurling’s Holy Grail.

It was Gareth McGee who wore the number one jersey when Newtownshandrum and Birr – again – stood in Dunloy’s way when Ryan remembers his first times at Croke Park, in the early noughties.

He is a by-product of the club’s state of the art hurling academy, an indoor training facility allowing the grassroots to hone their skills in all weathers.

The stars from their trailblazing teams of the nineties are among those steering their underage production line that has them back at the top table in Antrim.

“Arguably, you have probably the best facilities in Ireland,” he said.

“You are training indoors with the ball wall and it is far faster, it sharpens up your touch.”

The goalkeeper’s eye is an important part of the armoury, but Elliott only started to “do nets properly” in his mid-teens.

When St Louis won the 2015 Mageean Cup, he was the last line of defence bridging a 27-year gap to the school’s only other title when his father was the custodian and the first ever Ulster College All-Star ‘keeper, another path walked by his son.

“I was doing goals for the teams above myself and when I got to minors, I have been there ever since,” Ryan said.

A “bad birthday” saw him just pick up one minor medal as Dunloy’s underage system gathered legs, but two u-21 and four senior medals has been a decent innings since.

After making his debut in 2016, he was at the wrong end of a quarter-final defeat to Ballycastle, but Keelan Molloy, Conal Cunning and Eoin O’Neill were among a younger crop to help Dunloy take the Volunteer Cup home 12 months later.

He made his Antrim senior debut in the 2017 Ulster Championship against Donegal.

The likes of Aaron Gillane, Diarmuid Byrnes and Cian Lynch were in the opposing corner when Limerick came to Cushendall 12 months later on his League debut.

Elliott was the current to player to have met current manager Darren Gleeson first.

The Portroe man came up to take a few goalkeeper sessions when his clubmate Liam Sheedy came on board in an advisory capacity in 2018 and is now leading up the current management team that includes goalkeeping coach Clinton Hennessy.

“You have Darren and Clinton who have played at the highest level, so I am learning a bit from them, they are both top notch,” Ryan said.

“Darren came in with Liam Sheedy and took me for the goalkeeper sessions, so I was the first person to meet Darren so we have a good relationship. If you need any advice, you can go and ask them.”

The last two seasons have been similar, yet different. Antrim have goe toe to toe with the superpowers in Division One, but after coming out on the right side of epic battles last season, they had a big fat zero to show for their efforts as they faced into their trip to Portlaoise.

“We were disappointed in being so close in a lot of games and the Laois game took a lot out of us,” he said of the defeat that forced them into relegation play-off with Offaly.

“You were so close to Kilkenny and Waterford and were really disappointed after those matches not to come away with points.

“We didn’t show up that day, we weren’t at our standard,” he states.

It opened the door on some soul-searching to get their house in order.

“We talked after it and then sat down a couple of days after it and properly analysed what was going wrong and we drew a line under it,” he said.

Saturday offers a chance for a second Joe McDonagh Cup and the carrot of a return to the Liam McCarthy Cup campaign to come.

But staying in Division One was the number one.

“The crowds coming to Corrigan and bringing the big teams up there, that’s what any player wants,” Ryan said.

“The more you are playing at the highest level, the more it is going to make you a better player.

“I would say every team starts the year focussing on getting to Croke Park and we are no different,” Elliott said of Saturday’s showdown with Kerry.

Togetherness is one of their key calling cards this season he feels.

“You are training three or four nights a week,” he said. “We are all very close-knit and friendly. It’s maybe what other Antrim teams didn’t have and it is same with Derry (footballers)

“We are with each other the majority of the time, you are playing at the highest standard and it is only going to make you better.”