Eoghan Campbell won’t accept Antrim underselling their Leinster Championship ambitions

The retirement of Neil McManus and the departure of the Dunloy quartet — Ryan Elliott, Keelan Molloy, Seaan Elliott and Eoin O’Neill — as well as St Enda’s clubman Joe Maskey meant Saffrons boss Darren Gleeson was largely picking from a depleted squad as they were also hit badly by injuries.

New faces were thrown in the deep end but the recent return of Ryan, Seaan and Nigel Elliott, as well as Molloy, has been a huge boost and Campbell insists the feel-good factor is back in the squad ahead of their trip to Kilkenny.

“We’ve built something really good over the last three of four years with Darren. We still felt that could continue this year, even though there were boys who did step away,” Campbell said.

“We believed there was a good foundation from previous years to be brought through to this year. I’d probably say the biggest detriment we had this year wasn’t the boys leaving, but the injury list we had. There were times when we had as many injured as we did training.

“We were trying to get good sessions in and managing the boys so that we’d have a team for the League. In the last few weeks, we’ve had a panel of maybe 35 or 36. That allows us to have in-house games, which we didn’t have throughout the League. And you can see the difference in the camp when you’re out playing games and it’s competitive.

“It’s been completely different, night and day since the League. The good vibe is back in the camp and we’re looking to drive it on.”

You might think that expectations would be tempered ahead of their second Leinster round-robin campaign but Campbell, who was rewarded with a place on the 2023-24 Club Team of the Year for his performances with Ruairí Óg Cushendall, suggests the exact opposite.

“We probably did have one eye on the Leinster Championship and giving it a good rattle,” the Antrim veteran said. “We have an eye on getting to a Leinster Final or coming third. With the League over, we’ve regrouped, left it behind us and we’re ready to go again.

“There’s no point in going out onto a pitch and thinking that you’re going to get beaten. If you’re thinking that, you’re already beaten. I know that’s the way I’ve always looked at it. Every game is a target for us and the target is to get into that Leinster Final. That’s what we want.

“And if we can’t get that, the next best thing is the third-place finish. Over the last couple of years, we’ve been close to Dublin, close to Wexford, we’ve run Kilkenny tight in the League a few times and there’s been a bit of a gap to Galway.

“But we do see it that we can win every game we play. That’s the way we’re going to be approaching it. Obviously outside the camp, ourselves and Carlow in the last game will be seen as do-or-die. But that’s not the way we see it and it’s probably not the way Carlow see it.

“You’re not just going in to make up the numbers. We definitely think it can open up massively for us if we can get a win early on. If you look at last year and the draw with Dublin, if we had won that and beat Wexford, we would have been in a Leinster Final with how it worked out.

“It doesn’t take much to get there with other results so it’s definitely something we can target. There’s no real talk of trying to stay up against Carlow in the last game, it’s not in our thinking.”

If Antrim and Campbell can back up those words on the pitch, this could be a Leinster campaign to savour.