By John Harrington

Terence ‘Sambo’ McNaughton has dedicated much of his life to the cause of hurling, not just in his beloved Cushendall, but in the whole of Antrim.

At the height of the ‘Troubles’ in the Six Counties, that often meant putting yourself in very real danger.

It’s because he appreciates the positive impact that peace has had on Gaelic Games in the North that he so fears the potential consequences of Brexit.

On the day the Antrim hurling legend was inducted into the GAA Museum’s Hall of Fame, he sat down with GAA.ie to reminisce on his life in hurling and articulate just why he’s so fearful of a return to the dark days of a hard border in the North.

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We were watching video footage of the 1989 All-Ireland Final when you received your Hall of Fame Award. Is it hard to believe it's 30 years ago now?

Ach, it feels a while ago now, lets put it like that. It's not today or yesterday. Life moves on and you get on with it. It's the one thing that's always brought up, that getting to the '89 Final was a great achievement for that team.

But I think our greatest achievement as a team was that we stayed in Division 1 for eight years when it was a proper Division 1. We competed in League Quarter-Finals and things like that there.

When we got to the All-Ireland Final in 1989, we were naive. We didn't know how to prepare for an All-Ireland.

Looking back on it now, some of the things we did were very amateurish and we got carried away and forgot about the game.

We were getting suits and people like yourself were interviewing us for the first time ever and things like that.

The county must have gone mad?

Ah, the county went buck-mad. Crazy stuff, when you look back on it. In 1991, Kilkenny beat us out here (in Croke Park) by a point (in the All-Ireland semi-final). I think if we had of got to the All-Ireland Final that year we would have been a different animal.

We knew we were there to hurl. Whereas in '89 we lost the All-Ireland Final the day we won the semi-final. Because people were saying it's great just to play in an All-Ireland Final.

Psychologically, we were just happy to get there and we didn't do ourselves justice then in the Final.

In 1988 we played that Tipperary team in the All-Ireland semi-final and they struggled to beat us. That Tipperary team were hungry and were a super team. They hadn't won an All-Ireland in 18 years at that stage (by 1989).

So they were coming full of hunger and desire too, like.

Is that group your hurled with still the best of friends?

Ah yeah. The majority of us would still meet regularly. That's one thing that (Jim) Nelson would have done. He gelled us and did a great job uniting us all.

We were led by Ciaran Barr, a Belfast man. Ciaran was a fantastic captain. But the team was predominantly North Antrim. I think there was only two Belfast men on it. The rest were all North Antrim.

We all love our club, I'm here today with my club tie on, everybody is passionate about their club. Nelson brought us together at that time and another man who deserves credit, and not a lot of people know him, was Michael O'Grady. Michael coached us that year, a Limerick man, and deserves great credit too for the work he did at that time.

They brought more professionalism to the whole set-up than there ever was before. Jim Nelson didn't allow you to do drills with your own club-mates, wee things like that there.

You weren't allowed to wear your club jersey to training either. Back in the day that was far out thinking.

You've given your life to Antrim hurling in a variety of roles. I'd imagine there have been some tough days, but ultimately has it been very rewarding?

Ach, I wouldn't change one minute of it. We're not a successful hurling as far as hurling goes, but we love the game as much as anywhere in Ireland. We're as passionate about it as anyone else.

If you drive through the glens of Antrim, if you drive to my village tonight, every kid walks about with a hurling stick. Even people that don't play hurling carry hurls and get involved. We love the game as much as anywhere else in Ireland and I wouldn't regret one minute of it.

Sometimes, and I know it's a cliche and easy for me to say, but sometimes there's more to the game than a handful of medals. The friends I've made out of the GAA down through the years throughout every county I've played against, and some of them are my best friends. We go on holidays together or stay with one another.

I've made great friends on All-Stars trips and that sort of thing. Kieran Kingston is a prime example. Our families go on holidays together, he's up in Cushendall two or three times a year on holidays.

They're the things that are more important than maybe medals. It's easy for me to say that because I don't have any All-Ireland medals. I would have loved an All-Ireland medal, but I don't lie in bed at night thinking I'm a failure.

There is more to the game than winning medals. I love the game. I have loved every minute I've given to it. It's in our DNA, especially in the Glens.

We don't need anyone from Cork, Tipp, and Kilkenny to teach us a love of the game. We have got that in spades.

You have a Tipperary manager now in Antrim...

Yeah, a good guy too. The last time I was with Antrim, Liam Sheedy came up. I would be friendly with Liam. He came up and helped us out and brought Darren (Gleeson) with him, so Darren is not coming in cold. He knows the players and he was there last year.

The players really like him and he seems tuned in. He's a modern, young, forward-thinking coach. I think Darren could do nothing but good for Antrim and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does.

I'm involved with a wee Division Two team that are in the County Final next week and he was at our game on Saturday looking at players and asking about players and doing all the right things.

He was at every game last weekend in Antrim because I was there too and I saw him. That's good, it shows he's really interested, and you have to do the leg-work.

Are the hurlers there to push Antrim on a bit more?

I think the hurlers are there to challenge for a Joe McDonagh. The last year we were there it was only a puck of the ball that Laois beat us by. We were the only team to beat Carlow and they went on to win it. On any given day a well-organised Antrim team will challenge Laois or Carlow or anybody, there won't be a puck of the ball in it.

Hopefully we grow. What needs to happen in Antrim is, if you look through the last 45 years, only one Belfast team has won a county title. The clubs in North Antrim are struggling with numbers now because there's not the big families there were anymore of six brothers and that sort of thing.

Belfast needs to start getting more people playing the game there because that's where the numbers are, that's where the population is, in Belfast. It's underachieving, but if we can get Belfast organised and producing top-quality hurlers, then Antrim can grow again and come back again.

The 'Gaelfast' initiative is very important so?

Yeah, Gaelfast is going to be the most important thing that has happened in Ulster hurling in my lifetime. It has to work. There's no coming back next year and trying a new idea, this has to be it. It must work.

People have to maybe crack a few eggs to make an omlette, it has to be done. There is no choice. For the good of the game and the survival of the game within Antrim and within Ulster, Gaelfast has to work.

You spoke powerfully on 'The Game' documentary about how the landscape in Ulster has changed significantly for GAA people since the cessation of the Troubles. It's clearly easier to be a hurler or footballer in the six counties now. That being the case, are you worried about Brexit and what that might bring?

Yeah, big time. It's hard for my friends that I have made in the south to appreciate how difficult it was for us. Even on the best days, I couldn't go certain places with my club top on. Back in the day you couldn't wait at a crossroads to be picked up by a bus in certain areas because it wouldn't be safe.

It's okay when you come from a village like Cushendall that's very tight-knit, but if you were in Belfast then you didn't want your kids out walking about with a hurling stick, you didn't want them wearing GAA tops, you maybe didn't want them involved at all.

The one thing that history has proven in Ireland, and I worry about it, that even though people will say 'ah there's not the support there', well there wasn't the support there in '69 either. But things happened that drove young people towards the paramilitaries and there's no guarantee that wouldn't happen again.

Because if something like a Bloody Sunday happens, then people will rush towards it and away we go again.

We have peace in our country now, and whatever about the rights and the wrong and politics of it which I won't get involved in, there's no disputing that everybody has a way better life now in the North than they did before. The North is a great place now.

I see tourists in my own village all the time coming up to watch hurling matches. More GAA people are coming up to us as well. Friends I'd made through years of hurling had never come north because they were afraid of the North. That's all gone. The Glens of Antrim, and I've said this 1,000 times, is as nice as the Ring of Kerry or anywhere else in this country.

I think they're playing with fire here. We need to live in peace and this Brexit thing is just like throwing petrol on a fire. It's giving the extremists fuel, when we should be taking energy away from them.

That's the way to defeat them, on both sides. To take the energy away from them. But Brexit is just giving them fuel. I don't understand Brexit and I don't think anybody does because anytime you lift a paper or watch a TV then someone has a different swing on it.

I don't know what the truth is or what's going to happen and I don't think anyone does. But the one thing I don't want is a return of the border. A border just sends out the wrong signal and here we go again.

How much would the trouble a border would bring hurt the GAA in the North? Especially at what's such a critical time for the GAA in Belfast in the early days of the 'Gaelfast' initiative?

Like, people don't understand what it was like. Belfast GAA clubs suffered tremendously. I'm involved managing the St. Enda's hurling team at the moment, and they were the most attacked GAA club in Ireland. They had 13 members shot.

If you're not coming from a staunch GAA family, would you send your kids to a club like that back in the day? You'd have to be a really staunch GAA person to really want to keep going back there, if you think about it.

People just want to get on with life and we just love our games and love our hurling and the majority of Ulster love their football. Keep the politics out of it and lets just live life.

Who do you believe? People are telling lies. You watch Boris Johnson, and it's like Donal Trump has come over here. The whole thing just seems to be mad. It's crazy.

There are more educated than me who don't understand it. But I just know you can't trust that man.

When will common sense kick in here?