JAMES McNaughton was among the cohort of Antrim players struck by a gastric bug in the middle of last week – but it didn’t stop him shooting the lights out as the Saffrons downed Laois in Sunday’s must-win relegation battle.
The Loughgiel Shamrocks ace bagged 2-11 in a stellar display as Davy Fitzgerald’s men took a huge step towards Division 1B survival, with the Antrim boss re-iterating that they weren’t “pulling a fast one” after “14 or 15 guys were really sick”.
“I was a bit funny on Tuesday, Wednesday night,” said McNaughton as he reflected on a tumultuous week that finished on a high note.
“There was maybe a dozen there on Tuesday night and then another few on Friday night then, so we haven’t had a full training together this week…”
As for any questions around the credibility of the illness that swept through the Saffron camp, McNaughton insisted it didn’t get into players’ heads as the game neared.
“You just have to park that and put that to the side.
“Like, we know what we were going through and we know what was happening – you just can’t let the outside noise affect you. That’s the mantra we always carry.
“We all knew what we needed to do anyway.”
And they did it in some style, the 27-year-old’s 12 minute goal opening the floodgates as Antrim grabbed the ascendancy and refused to let it go – leaving Laois needing maximum points form upcoming home games against Carlow and Dublin to send the Saffrons down.
It was the nature of the performance, though, that pleased McNaughton most.
On their last appearance at Corrigan Park a fortnight earlier, Antrim had been swatted aside by a rampant Waterford side – but their fortunes began to turn when bouncing back from eight down to claim a battling draw in Carlow the following week.
And any questions marks over how the bug might have affected them were answered in emphatic fashion as the Saffrons overpowered Tommy Fitzgerald’s O’Moore men.
“We spoke during the week about how big of a game it was – there was no hiding from the fact that it was a game of a big magnitude for us.
“It gives us a chance to stay up in this division, which probably was bare minimum for us this year, but hopefully we’ve done enough to stay up now.
“It was a big game but we went out in the first half and set the tone, got the early enough goal and that sort of settled us into it and thankfully we pushed on.
“We knew ourselves after the Waterford game that it wasn’t good enough – we didn’t show enough fight, we didn’t show enough want, the hunger wasn’t there. We didn’t go putting our bodies where we don’t want to put them, and it showed because they got the better of us easily.
“But against Carlow we said ‘we’ll go and we’ll bring fight and hopefully the hurling will take care of itself’; we brought fight, and I suppose we did sort of turn a corner.
“It was the first time we really did bring a lot of fight this year, and then today the plan was to bring fight and that was it… just fight until the final whistle.”
And, having managed four goals in their first five League games, the Saffrons – who open up their Leinster Championship campaign away to Wexford on April 20 – were handsomely rewarded for their attacking intent.
“We always want to be ruthless but whenever it opens up in front of you like that, it’s hard not to go for a goal, to be honest.
“Probably there was a couple of times by myself that I should have just stuck it over but when it opens up like that and the goal is on, you might as well try and go for it.
“We always speak about being ruthless when you get into that situation and you want to be ruthless at this level, and obviously we haven’t been in the League campaign so far.”