Antrim hurling's most celebrated forward left the panel shortly before the embarrassing loss to London last month. Liam Watson today told Declan Bogue in the Belfast Telegraph that he was having no fun playing for the Antrim seniors and pointed to problems with 'player expenses'.
We were asked to take pay cuts. What's the point in going out for six nights a week if you know you are having to take a pay cut? That's where the whole fun thing comes into it. You just ask, 'what's the point?'
Watson, who starred in Loughiel Shamrocks All-Ireland victory of 2012, said he relishes club training but says he gets no enjoyment from the county set-up, though he insists this is not a reflection on the players or the outgoing manager. He says that
They couldn't even get us all an Antrim hurling bag. We were coming to matches and training in our club stuff and then we are trying to get club rivalry out of the way!
What's the point in going half-hearted, saying you want Antrim to do well, but not giving them the backing?
Antrim's manager PJ O'Mullan quit last Friday. Watson sympathised and said O'Mullan wasn't to blame for their current standing. Antrim hurling is in chaos.
The issue of players slaving away in training in the service of a team who are destined for an early exit this summer has cropped up before this year.
Even middling teams are battling to remain competitive in the face of local apathy and despair. The Longford footballers have won at least one championship match every year since 2009. They are a respectable outfit, far from being the lowest of the low, as they were two decades ago.
Yet new manager Denis Connerton disclosed at the start of the year that 44% of the players he invited onto the county panel had, for a variety of reasons, declined the offer.
