Portglenone players and supporters celebrate after winning the Antrim Minor Football Championship 'B' Final last weekend.
By John Harrington
Bunting and flags ripple in the breeze wherever you look in Portglenone and there’s even a car painted in the club colours of black and saffron.
The small village on the banks of the Bann is buzzing ahead of Sunday’s Antrim Senior Football Championship Final against Cargin and why wouldn’t it be.
The locals know this is an occasion to be savoured. The club has never won an Antrim senior championship, appeared in just three previous finals, and their recent history has only amplified the sound of opportunity knocking.
Prior to this year’s campaign, Roger Casements Portglenone endured the pain of five successive championship semi-final defeats, a sequence that began in 2019 with a three-match emotional roller-coaster against Lamh Dhearg.
The first replay in that sequence made headlines when it went to a free-kick shootout that was abandoned after the teams had successfully scored 10 shootout points each.
The then Antrim Chairperson, Ciaran McCavana, called a halt to proceedings, deeming a second replay a fairer way to settle the contest.
Portglenone themselves then showed an admirable sense of fair play in 2021 when the concession of a late goal saw them defeated by Aghagallon after double extra-time.
It later emerged that the additional 10 minutes of extra-time that was played that day was in breach of finish on the day protocols for the 2021 championship.
Rather than appeal the result, Portglenone were of the opinion they had been beaten fairly and squarely on the field of play and Aghagallon progressed to the final.
That surely should have earned the club some good karma, but instead the following year they suffered more heartbreak against the same opponents when they conceded a goal in extra-time of injury-time to lose by a single point again.
Last year’s semi-final defeat to Dunloy stung in a different sort of a way because it was a match most people fancied Portglenone to win against a club more renowned for hurling than football.
Portglenone players and supporters celebrate after defeating Lámh Dhearg in the Antrim SFC semi-final. Photo credit: Colleen Webb.
They finally got over their semi-final hoodoo this year with a comfortable win over Lámh Dhearg, and now that they’re in the sunny uplands of a first county final appearance in 15 years the place is giddy with excitement.
What would it mean to them if the could win the thing? No better man to ask than Martin Kearney who has been club secretary for the past 25 years unbroken and also served in the position for other stints going right back to the 1970s.
“I suppose the best way I could answer that question would be by saying, it's hard to know!”, says Kearney with a chuckle.
“Having lost the last five semi-finals, coming into this year's semi-final you just didn't want to be going down the road for a sixth time with that same feeling.
“For the last five years we've come home with our tails between our legs but we haven't fallen out with each other.
“We’ve always regrouped, we've held it all together, and I just have a good feeling about it this time.
“The excitement that it has brought is brilliant and I've seen the best of our community this year. Our footballers at all levels have done well, our Camógs have done well, we got ladies football started this year, underage is very successful, we had a great fundraiser recently.
“Every time you go down to the pitch now there are kids playing there and that's great to see. And whenever we've taken a picture of a win or successful event you always have children jumping into the front of the picture. Everybody wants to be a part of this.
“The feel-good factor has been brilliant. If we could win it would give everyone a lift and certainly secure the future of our underage.”
Roger Casements, Portglenone opened a new floodlit pitch in 2018.
Regardless of how Sunday’s Final goes, the club’s future looks very bright indeed.
Back in 2018 they opened a new state of the art sand-based pitch with floodlights which in its first year won an award for being the best club pitch in Antrim and has since hosted National Football and Hurling League matches as well as many county championship matches.
That development cost €1.2M and was fully paid for by the time the pitch opened thanks to a hugely successful fundraising drive.
A new gym has also been built and the club recently purchased a three-acre site and are currently developing plans for both indoor and outdoor 4G playing areas which will cost in the region of €2M (see below video).
To help raise the funds for that work, the club has set up ‘Club Portglenone’, which sees members make monthly contributions to help raise the finance required for club development.
Last month they successfully ran a big fundraiser, the ‘PG100’, which raised a significant sum of money for club development as well as five local charities.
The club has successfully engaged with the Northern Ireland Department of infrastructure to construct a cycle/walking path from the village down to the pitch and it’s easy to imagine that will be a very busy thoroughfare given the health of the club’s underage structures.
This year alone, the boy’s U-16 footballers have won the Antrim all-county championship as well as the Breslin Cup, while the club’s minor footballers won the Antrim ‘B’ Championship and a south-west regional cup.
Cyclists prepare to take off for PG100 fundraiser organised by The Friends of Portglenone GAC.
Camogie is also provided at the club’s facilitieds by Geraldines Camogie club, and this year the club has also got Ladies football up and running for the first time.
“We were previously amalgamated with our neighbours Ahoghill at underage but five or six years ago we decided that with the numbers of children coming forward we would try to go it alone,” says Kearney.
“The amount of effort that has gone in to underage development is now beginning to prove so worthwhile.
“Like most clubs we coach at U6, U8, U10 and U12 and there's a big focus obviously on Go Games. We're also involved in a multi-sport activity called Active Kids.
“The local primary school in Portglenone is quite strong and won every award at primary school level in boys and girls football as well as Camógs in the year 2023/24.
“We're very fortunate too that one of our major youth coaches is Brian Burns, who was an All-Ireland winner with Down and is now living in the area. We've good people like that who have put together a very successful structure that is now bearing a lot of fruit.
“Previously we would have struggled to Under-21 and that kind of thing, but we see much better days ahead now.”
Portglenone players celebrate after winning the Antrim Minor B football championship. Photo credit: Colleen Webb.
When Martin Kearney talks about the club he loves so dearly, it’s clear that Roger Casements are as much a community as they are a sporting endeavour.
The club’s social centre on the village main street is always a hive of activity, hugely enthusiastic volunteers populate the various club committees and coach the growing number of teams, and the expertise provided by club members has helped make the club development work possible and affordable.
The heartbreak of the last five years has only strengthened the bonds between the community and the senior footballers, all the more so because the team is managed by one of their own, John McKeever.
“John has put a huge amount of work into this for the past three years and has been tremendous,” says Kearney.
“When you ‘shop local’ the criticism can be pretty fierce when results don’t go your way, but John has taken the team to a level I’ve never seen before in this club.
“He had quite a good panel when he started but he's seen the need to enrich and renew the structure by bringing though younger players. Over the three years he’s really built it up and hopefully he will stay going regardless of the result on Sunday because the future is bright”
Portglenone senior football team manager, John McKeever. Photo credit: Colleen Webb.
It’s going to require a special effort from Portglenone to win their first ever Antrim SFC title because reigning champions Cargin aren’t in the habit of giving you anything easy.
The dominant force in Antrim football for some time now, they’re going for a third title in a row and eight in the last 10 years.
“Cargin have the craft,” says Kearney. “Their age-profile might be a little bit on a higher side, but they have the sort of craft that few club can compete with.
“They played St. Brigid's in the semi-final and after 22 minutes nobody had scored, but they got one break and they got the goal and that’s what crafty teams do.
“We would like to think we have the more skilful and faster players, but it's very hard to compete with craft and that's what we must try to do.
“We're all looking forward to it very much, it means a lot to our club and community.
“In the last six weeks we buried our President, James McAtamney. We've also recently lost another one of our long-serving committee members.
“We also have a significant number of families with illness challenges at the minute. With so many families suffering from illness and bereavement, to go out and try to win this would give those families, albeit for a short period, a bit of a lift.”
