‘Trust’ in his Errigal Ciaran teammates key factor for Oguz

By Barry O’Donnell

ERRIGAL Ciaran midfielder Joe Oguz believes that the ‘trust’ ingrained within the squad enables them to ride out rocky periods in games and emerge on the other side as winners.

Often times during this protracted championship run, the Dunmoyle boys have appeared to be creaking and that was definitely the case in the third quarter of last Saturday’s Ulster Senior Club preliminary round opener with St Eunan’s of Letterkenny.

The teams were deadlocked eight times over the course of the hour, but the Donegal visitors at O’Neill’s Healy Park appeared to be in the ascendancy during that 15-minute spell after the break, with the O’Donnells, Niall and Shane, helping them establish a firm grip on proceedings.

Crucially though, through a mixture of poor finishing on their part, allied to some resolute Errigal defending, the Tyrone champions rode out the storm, and with Ben McDonnell registering three late points, they eventually emerged on the right side of the 0-12 to 0-10 scoreline.

O’Donnell’s midfield partner Oguz, who also impressed over the hour, felt that the curate’s egg nature of the Errigal display was probably symptomatic of their campaign as a whole. However whatever the flaws in their performances on occasion, he stressed that they always maintain that collective belief.

“It probably has been the story of the season so far. As I said after the Trillick match we trust ourselves as players and going down the home straight we trust ourselves to finish off the game. We showed it again there against St Eunan’s

“They had something like three weeks to get ready for this. But that is not an excuse for us, we are used to it now. We had Clonoe and then the replay, and then we played Killyclogher the week after. That is what you want, more games. We were slow enough starting again but as I said we trust ourselves going down the line.”

Oguz won the first-half penalty at the weekend which resulted in a brilliant save by Donegal county keeper Shaun Patton to divert aside Peter Harte’s piledriver. He was full of praise for his midfield colleague McDonnell and the coolness he displayed in the closing stages to help see Errigal across the winning line.

“He was in great form, fair play to him. He’s a quality player and he has shown it the whole year. But we always keep our composure and had the players to finish it. This time around it was Ben.”

Errigal have little time to savour their success as they get set to travel to Belfast this Sunday afternoon to face Cargin at Corrigan Park in the quarter-finals.

The Erin’s Own club have bossed the Saffron footballing landscape for a decade now, winning the county title eight times since 2015. Oguz appreciates that they are a seasoned outfit when it comes to the Ulster stage.

“Every game in Ulster is going to be tough, we know that.

“It’s going to be a battle from here on whoever we play.

“We just had our focus fully on St Eunan’s, we couldn’t afford to look further ahead than that. Now we can get working on Cargin this week.

“They have been there or thereabouts this past decade or so, as they tend to win Antrim most years. It’s something still new to us because Tyrone is so tough to get out of but we are relishing every minute of it.

“We took another step forward by beating St Eunan’s and we have another quick turnaround.

“But we won’t complain about that. You want to be playing football at this time of year and we are glad to be here.”