YOU'D THINK that after 14 seasons without a Championship win things couldn't get much worse. We're talking about Antrim football here, though, so you'd be wrong to think that.

Take what happened during a few fraught weeks this spring, the time of the year when other counties are doing the donkey work for summer. Having hoped to start a techno-revolution by importing manager John Morrison from Armagh last year, Ant rim were thrown into chaos when the energetic Morrison disappeared. Apparently the new junta, running the county board slashed the training budget. Some say he was pushed. Some say he jumped.

Morrison is having a triple by-pass operation soon.

Morrison's time in charge was marked by an attempt to introduce some long-term structures to an ailing county and by a manic dedication to the job. He was difficult to work with and players either loved or hated him. The story is told of the promising young St Paul's player Joe Quinn, who was brought on with 10 minutes to go against Westmeath in the league and then called off again - less than five minutes later. That was the last seen of Joe for a while.

When Morrison went he was replaced by a triumvirate consisting of two of his selectors, Peter McCann and Ray Graffin, and a physio/coach Paul MacCormick. The triumvirate felt their first duty was to tend to the wounds of the disaffected, a group who form a sizeable proportion of the football community in Antrim. Many downtrodden souls returned to the fold and for a brief while there were more than 40 players on the panel.

All went well. On March 2nd, the team travelled to Ballinasloe for their final league game of the season and despite not scoring at all in the second half of a game which ended in a nine-point defeat, they preserved their third division status by dint of favourable results elsewhere. The triumvirate looked set to stay until the Championship at least.

Plain sailing, then, right through until Sunday March 9th, the end of their second week in charge. On that afternoon they lost a McKenna Cup game to Armagh at Casement Park. Nothing strange there, but the new management group resigned over the weekend, alleging that the county board was attempting to introduce Antrim's only ever All Star Andy McCallin, into the management group without their consent.

In the aftermath, most of the players left, too. First out the door were those from Moneyglass, Cargin St Paul's and Lamh Dearg. This was unfortunate because several of them had just returned. Mickey Boyle and Frank Wilson (both Lamb Dearg), for instance, had been in exile for 15 months playing soccer. Eight St Paul's players were absent for a similar period. Long story. Long, long story.

Accounts of exactly what went on with Andy McCallin are garbled and both sides are sticking to their story. Some say McCallin was initially recommended to the county board by the triumvirate, who later came to feel that McCallin was being installed as supremo over their heads.

The county board announced that one of the triumvirate, McCann had actually resigned on the Friday, confirming his decision in a call to county chairman Joe O'Boyle. Graffin, they said, had only stayed on so that the team would have a manager on Sunday.

Only after the resignation of McCann had McCallin been approached. For his part, poor Andy McCallin denied any interest in taking over the team and had apparently rebuffed advances to become manager. The wounds were too serious for staunching at this stage, however.

Ray McDonnell from the Rossa's club took over late in March. Brave man.

McDonnell has some pedigree, having managed his club to county titles in 1989 and 1991. He might have hoped to restore peace and calm to a troubled football community, but on April 22nd the team captain, Ciaran O'Neill, and his Cargin club-mate Eddie Quinn (who together formed the first choice mid-field) both upped and left the panel.

Peter McCann is a Cargin man and his departure led to his club-mates self-imposed exile. All in all the county set-up has lost about half a dozen players from Cargin (the county runners-up last year).

The St Paul's players, eight of them in all, had refused to play under John Morrison. Refused that is except for John McManus, who stayed on, and Aidan Donnelly, who got called in just before the championship with Cavan last year.

Under the short-lived triumvirate, all the St Paul's players and all the Cargin players had come back. Considering St Paul's four-point mauling of Killybegs in the Ulster Club Championship, hopes were high for a brief period that the county team - could upset Donegal come the summer. Not to be.

"You're at trailing sometimes now and you re asking all the time, who's that and who's that, says Sean McGreevy, the St Paul's goal-keeper who has stayed with the panel. "Ray McDonnell is giving it everything just now, but it's hard. I'd understand both sides of the argument. There was talk there a week or two ago about trimming the panel by 12. There aren't 12 to trim. Sometimes if you take away the nine or 10 who are injured there are only 14 or so out at training.

Antrim's personnel got another trimming when a group of players attended a seven-a-side tournament at Queen's University while Meath manager Sean Boylan was giving the rest of the panel a special training session one Saturday afternoon in Casement Park. Through panel politics, Antrim are down more than a dozen good quality players.

"The whole thing has just been a sorry affair," say Gearoid Adams, the wing back now into his fourth year with the team "You couldn't blame one person for it, but it was all badly handled. Why didn't I leave too? There's been too many splits. I understand why boys didn't play, but you only get one chance to play for your county.

McDonnell met with the St Paul's players and their manager, Peter Finn, when he took over. At present, however, the county champions are down to having just three players - Chris Murphy, Sean McGreevey and Paul McErlean on the panel. That leaves Aidan Donnelly, Joe Kennedy, John McManus, Joe Quinn and Peter McStravick, Anto Finnegan missing for one reason or another.

The Moneyglass club are in high dudgeon also (Ray Graffin was their man), robbing the team of Benny Devlin, last year's Championship goalkeeper.

"It's been awful," says Terry McCrudden, the centre back who is sitting out this year's Championship as he recovers from a knee operation. "When John Morrison went there was a void there. There's conflicting sides of the story and it's been a mess, but nobody should have the idea that because we don't win, it means we're not proud. People say to me, how do you get motivated playing football for Antrim. I ask them how could you not. I came off last year after getting beaten in the Championship and I was crying. We were devastated. We may get beaten, but we never go out thinking we're going to get beaten.

Last summer, in Casement Park, Antrim had indeed put in a storming second-half performance and got, to within four points of Cavan, having cut a nine-points half-time deficit to three points with 10 minutes left in the match. Antrim scored 11 points that day, the first time since 1982 that their points total had moved into double figures.

Last year's loss to Cavan wasn't the first heartbreak they have suffered. They ran Donegal to three points in successive years after Donegal won the All-Ireland. They drew with Tyrone in Casement in 1987, having been five-points clear with 10 minutes left when Eddie McToal got sent off and they disintegrated. In 1989, they shot an unbelievable 22 wides against Monaghan.

In 1992, they lost by a point to Fermanagh. The next year they saw one of their best players, Stephen Mulvenna, switch to Derry and win an All-Ireland medal.

From last year's Championship set-up, over a dozen players are gone this year through a combination of disaffection, injury and suspension. Of the six players who scored in last year's Championship, five won't be back this summer.

Then there is Brendan Elliot who played in Philadelphia last summer and, along with another player was accused of involvement in, well an off-pitch disagreement with a referee. Although this argument took place in a car park, Elliot managed to incur a ban. He scooted across to New York and played there in defiance of the ban. He came home and began playing National League games for Antrim, the county board apparently unaware that the ban was applicable there, too. Inevitably things caught up with Brendan Elliot.

"Brendan's a good footballer" says Gearoid Adams. "If he was a player in any other county it would have all been sorted out by now. He's done about six or seven months of suspension and he's not been told anything. If he played for Derry or Down or Cork the county board would have cleared the whole thing up one way or another."

Struggling to overcome a niggling hamstring injury, the high points of Adams's few years with the county team are few and far between.

"The high point would be fairly low for most other people," he says, "but it would be beating Fermanagh in a Division Three relegation play-off last year. They went down to Division Four and we fairly stuffed them that day. I know Paul Brewster and for him that was his lowest point playing for Fermanagh. But look at them now an All-Ireland B title and good under-age players. A lot of people think they'll go places. Look at us, we've got better resources and better players, but we're not doing anything. I don't know if it was still all splits and rows in two or three years time if I'd have the enthusiasm to keep going.

Sean McGree knows why he keeps going. "Yeah, it's depressing sometimes, but I wouldn't like you to think it's all bad. The lads that we have will give it a good lash against Donegal. It's more depressing when you're not playing anything. Just playing in the Championship is exciting, getting out there in front of 15,000 or 20,000 people. Don't go writing that it's all doom and gloom.

"We played Down in a challenge a few weeks ago and we got a draw. Surprising, but we put in 100 per cent effort that day. That makes you think about what we might do if we got it right."

Adams and McGreavey talk like serious football men. Do they speak amongst themselves about the streak, the 14 seasons of defeats. Of course they do. They hate the defeats and rail against the defeats. What strikes one most talking to them though is the fact that they look forward. Things can only get better, they say. Things will get better.

The team have brought back some, old faces. Donal Armstrong, who played on the team in 1,982 when they beat Cavan, is back in saffron, as are Enda McTamney and Frank Fitsimmons. Ciaran Hamill, who played minor that day in 1982, is, still going, as is his hugely talented brother Ronan, who was man of the match when he captained St Colman's, Newry, to the McRory Cup four years ago. Even though the under-21 side this year took a 23-point filleting by Tyrone, there is a consensus that three maybe four of those players will make it.

The county board organised a six-hour seminar on GAA structures within the county in April, roping in consultants from several more, successful football counties (quite a choice there) to give talks on planning for long-term success. There is a feeling it might take half a decade to get things right.

In the meanwhile the lads running around Casement Park of an evening are left to daydream about what might have been and what might yet be. The worst team in the country? Not when they pull on the jersey, not in their heads, not by a long chalk.