By John Harrington

Antrim’s 1989 All-Ireland SHC semi-final victory over Offaly is commonly regarded as the greatest shock in championship hurling, but that does the Saffrons a disservice.

In the late eighties and early nineties they regularly went toe to toe with the traditional powers in the country and were perhaps unfortunate they only reached one All-Ireland Final in that period.

Certainly, in 1989, Offaly would have had ample warning of the dangers of underestimating Antrim.

They had already lost to Antrim in a match of considerable consequence that year.

In the final round of the Hurling League Antrim defeated Offaly in Birr in what was effectively a Division 1 relegation play-off.

The All-Ireland semi-finals of ’86, ’87, and ’88 also served notice that Antrim hurling was plotting a rising graph.

In the ’86 semi-final they scored 1-24 against eventual champions Cork, which was the highest points (over the bar) total that Cork had ever conceded in Championship hurling before then and for some years afterwards.

Unfortunately for Antrim, they also conceded some soft goals that day and ended up losing by 7-11 to 1-24.

They played Kilkenny in the novel setting of Dundalk in the 1987 All-Ireland semi-final and gave as good as they got for much of the game until a late flourish from the Cats saw them win by 2-18 to 2-11.

It was a similar story again in 1988, Tipperary eventually beating Antrim by 3-15 to 2-10, but the final score not quite reflective of just how competitive the match had been.

Antrim were a serious force back then for two reasons. They had some brilliant hurlers and, just as importantly, they had a very canny manager in Jim Nelson.

Club hurling has always been strong in Antrim, but, ironically, that’s one of the reasons why they’ve sometimes struggled to field competitive county teams.

Such is the rivalry between the club teams and the social and geographic divide between the clubs from the Glens and the clubs from Belfast that developing a real unity in an Antrim dressing-room has proven challenging over the years.

In the late eighties and early nineties, though, Antrim managed to develop a real one for all and all for one spirit, and that was largely thanks to the late Jim Nelson.

Speaking to BBC Sport NI in 2014 to mark the 25th anniversary of Antrim reaching the ’89 semi-final, Nelson agreed his greatest achievement was breaking down dressing-room barriers that had traditionally held Antrim hurling back.

“It was politically tough at the beginning because people were happy within their own wee circles, that was one of the things that we had to break down,” said Nelson.

“It’s something I maybe took a lot of credit for because I put a lot of effort and time into it, even to the extent that we didn’t allow players from the same club to train with each other so that people would mix and get to know that people from Belfast don’t have horns.

“And for Belfast people to think that if you come from Cushendall or Ballycastle or somewhere else, they don’t have horns either. It’s only the cows that have horns!”

The fact that most of them are still in regular contact with one another is a testament to Nelson’s success in developing a team-spirit with that generation of Antrim hurlers.

When you ask Terence ‘Sambo’ McNaughton to reflect on ’89 and that era of Antrim hurling, his first instinct is to identify Nelson’s role in transforming them into a band of brothers.

“Ah yeah, the majority of us would still meet regularly,” McNaughton told GAA.ie. “That's one thing that (Jim) Nelson would have done. He gelled us and did a great job uniting us all.

“We were led by Ciaran Barr, a Belfast man. Ciaran was a fantastic captain. But the team was predominantly North Antrim. I think there was only two Belfast men on it. The rest were all North Antrim.

“We all love our club, everybody is passionate about their club. Nelson brought us together at that time and another man who deserves credit, and not a lot of people know him, was Michael O'Grady. Michael coached us that year, a Limerick man, and deserves great credit too for the work he did at that time.

“They brought more professionalism to the whole set-up than there ever was before. Jim Nelson didn't allow you to do drill with your own club-mates, wee things like that there.

“You weren't allowed to wear your club jersey to training either. Back in the day that was far out thinking.”

Liking your team-mates will only ever get you so far, you need talent to go with spirit if you want to be in the business of winning at the highest level and that generation of Antrim hurlers certainly didn’t lack for talent.

Brothers Eddie and Dessie Donnelly were superb defenders, Paul McKillen was a dynamic midfielder, while Terence ‘Sambo’ McNaughton, and Olcan ‘Clute’ McFetridge were both strong ball-winners and accurate finishers.

“We had some great leaders on that team,” said Nelson. “And we had people of great stature and character.

“I think the one thing I’d say about that team is that team could never be intimidated. They were a big, strong team.

“It was built in a way that they were tremendously great hurlers and not matter what was asked of them they were prepared to do it.

“So, I think they deserve all the plaudits that they get.”

If you’re going to create history, then you might as well do it in some style and that’s exactly what Antrim did when beating Offaly in that 1989 semi-final.

The match seemed to going to the script most people had penned for it as Offaly slowly started to pull away in the first-half, only to be pegged back when Clute McFetridge won a penalty that Aidan McCarry slammed to the back of the net.

‘Clute’ was one of the most explosive inside forwards of the era and it was he who blew Offaly to smithereens in the second-half, scoring two fine goals.

When McCarry banged in a fourth goal the victory was assured, and Antrim had reached their first All-Ireland Final since 1943.

It remains arguably the greatest day in the county’s hurling history, but when you talk to the players themselves it’s clear they have mixed feelings.

The semi-final win over Offaly was sweet, but it was soured a little by the team’s failure to hit the same heights in the All-Ireland Final against Tipperary.

“It's the one thing that's always brought up, that getting to the '89 Final was a great achievement for that team,” says McNaughton.

“But I think our greatest achievement as a team was that we stayed in Division 1 for eight years when it was a proper Division 1.

“We competed in League Quarter-Finals and things like that there.

"When we got to the All-Ireland Final in 1989, we were naive. We didn't know how to prepare for an All-Ireland.

“Looking back on it now, some of the things we did were very amateurish and we got carried away and forgot about the game.

“We were getting suits and people like yourself were interviewing us for the first time ever and things like that.

“The county went buck-mad. Crazy stuff, when you look back on it. In 1991, Kilkenny beat us by a point (in the All-Ireland semi-final). I think if we had of got to the All-Ireland Final that year we would have been a different animal.

“We knew we were there to hurl. Whereas in '89 we lost the All-Ireland Final the day we won the semi-final. Because people were saying it's great just to play in an All-Ireland Final.

“Psychologically, we were just happy to get there and we didn't do ourselves justice then in the Final.”

Over 30 years later, that Antrim team of the late eighties and early nineties still live large in the mind’s eye.

With nicknames like Clute, Sambo, Beaver, Pappy, Hippy, Humpy, and Woody, those iridescent saffron jersies, and the mixture of devil and dash the team played with, it’s fair to say they had a certain glamour all of their own making.

They didn’t win the All-Ireland title many of them deep down felt they were capable of, but for players like Sambo McNaughton it was the journey that made the whole thing worthwhile rather than any destination.

“Ach, I wouldn't change one minute of it,” he says. “We're not a successful hurling as far as hurling goes, but we love the game as much as anywhere in Ireland. We're as passionate about it as anyone else.

“If you drive through the glens of Antrim, if you drive to my village tonight, every kid walks about with a hurling stick.

“Even people that don't play hurling carry hurls and get involved. We love the game as much as anywhere else in Ireland and I wouldn't regret one minute of it.

“Sometimes, and I know it's a cliche and easy for me to say, but sometimes there's more to the game than a handful of medals.

“The friends I've made out of the GAA down through the years throughout every county I've played against, and some of them are my best friends. We go on holidays together or stay with one another.

“They're the things that are more important than maybe medals. It's easy for me to say that because I don't have any All-Ireland medals. I would have loved an All-Ireland medal, but I don't lie in bed at night thinking I'm a failure.

“There is more to the game than winning medals. I love the game. I have loved every minute I've given to it. It's in our DNA, especially in the Glens.

“We don't need anyone from Cork, Tipp, and Kilkenny to teach us a love of the game. We have got that in spades.”