Ahead of today's expected disciplinary announcement from the Ulster Council, Antrim football manager Brian White is pessimistic about the county's prospects. If the provincial authority confirms the Antrim County Board's suspensions arising from the county final, White's emerging team will have been gutted.

September's county final was marked by a running brawl at the end of the match. The county board was moved to take swift action against a backdrop of widespread negative publicity. The banning of the clubs from senior activity effectively disabled many of the county's best players.

In the space of a year, White has taken Antrim from the highs of a B All-Ireland and historic senior success to the lows of struggling in the current National League with a considerably weakened team. Had this happened in any year since 1982 it would have been less frustrating. But after winning a first championship match in 18 years last summer, Antrim football was in the unusual position of looking ahead to the coming year with confidence.

"Soul-destroying is a fair description," says White. "There has to be an element of sympathy for the county board and what they were trying to do but many people see the suspensions as slightly harsh. "When you see how some other counties operate, they'd be nowhere near as severe as our county board. We're most severe on our own people. The county board is rigorous in its approach to discipline but there were no winners in this. We've all lost."

On Sunday Antrim were comprehensively beaten by Cork in their second Division Two A fixture, following the opening-day defeat by Leitrim. In a fortnight they play Armagh, Ulster champions and the other county on sabbatical from Division One, so the pre-Christmas schedule is very much front-loaded with difficult fixtures.

"With a full panel, there's members of the development squad who'd only be on the periphery of the team but are now at the coalface. When you're playing top counties, even if they're putting out experimental teams, you'd like to take them on with your best players. Sunday's team had 10 missing from the side that played Derry in the championship."

It's not just that White and his team must mark time with a shadow team but the opportunity to prepare the first 15 and maintain the momentum of the championship has been lost.

"The players wanted to get back as soon as possible (after the summer). They were ambitious to do well in the league and push the boat out a bit further in the championship. Now we've had to redraw our schedule. This time last year we were doing indoor work with weights and that gave us our aerobic fitness. Now we can't do that and I've a squad which is a bunch of strangers to each other. About 65 per cent of them haven't played for the county before this league."

So it's back to square one for the county with the least enviable record in the country up to last season. There is additional frustration in the GAA's adoption of a new championship format that would guarantee Antrim extra matches next year even if their first round against Derry failed to provide revenge for last July's eventual defeat.

But would the knowledge of that safety net make defeat more acceptable and weaken the desire to dig deep?

"Most teams are going to feel that," said White, "and players will have to adapt. When things get tough, will they give up and decide they're going to wait for the next game. I think anyone does that at their peril. You have to have the ambition of winning every match you play. Anything else is a false performance and has to affect a team's morale and future performances."

Even if the Ulster Council mitigates the severity of the suspensions there is the danger that the bitterness between the clubs will poison their ability to work effectively together on the county panel. For White the latter scenario is eminently more manageable than the former.

"If the best players in Antrim aren't available it'll be a struggle, a task too much to expect the others to deliver within a year of coming together. This was always going to have a residual effect but the smart money says that talking resolves these issues."

Meanwhile, Cork's county board meeting tonight is expected to announce the new senior hurling manager in succession to Jimmy Barry-Murphy. The executive committee will recommend a name and it is likely the full board will confirm their choice. Tom Cashman, Barry-Murphy's assistant over the past eight years, is the frontrunner and given that he has expressed his interest in taking over it is unlikely the board will overlook him.

Dublin county secretary John Costello has explained the county's desire to stay out of the Leinster hurling championship preliminary round-robin. "The feeling in the county is that there is a top tier in the province consisting of Kilkenny, Offaly and Wexford and a lower tier of the preliminary round teams. Ourselves and Laois are somewhere in the middle and our decision was to take our chances in the main draw rather than go into the round-robin again."