MARCUS CAVAROLI
CONFIDENCE is a great thing for a young player to have and Mark Doyle has it in abundance at the moment after storming ahead in Drogheda United’s goal-scoring charts at the weekend.
The 19-year-old’s double in Cobh took his tally to seven in all competitions from nine appearances and he has already started more games than in the whole of last season.
It’s been a fairytale start to the campaign for the Skerries native, but he insists that it’s simply the rewards that come with being picked on a regular basis.
‘From the start I knew I would be playing,’ he pointed out. He [manager Tim Clancy] put a bit of faith in me, so once he did that it gave me a bit of confidence and I got two in the first game and I’ve been playing well for him since then.
‘That’s six goals in the league, seven in total. At the start of the season that total would have been way beyond my wildest dream, but I’ve had a good run of games and I knew if I was starting I would get a few.’
Currently fourth top scorer in the First Division, behind out-and-out strikers David O’Sullivan, Georgie Kelly and Paul Furlong, Doyle admits it’s crossed his mind to have a go at becoming the second tier’s ‘golden boot’.
‘Yes, but only time will tell,’ he responded. ‘I just want to keep going the way I’m going and try and get as many as possible and see what happens.
‘It’s not something we’ve really talked about [being Drogheda’s top scorer], but the good thing about this team is that everyone is contributing with goals. You’ve seen Richie Purdy and Ciaran Kelly has a few as well. Goals are coming from all over the shop and that’s what we need.’
Fellow teenager Kelly was also on the scoresheet in Cobh, along with 20-year-old Purdy and Chris Lyons, and Doyle agreed that the scoring threat Drogheda possess all over the field is serving them well.
‘We have that firepower in the team and we blew them away in a few minutes,’ he pointed out. The game was actually tight enough in the first half and there wasn’t much in it, but in a few minutes we got the goals and it was kind of game over.
‘We just had to come out in the second half and be professional. We were disappointed to concede because we wanted a clean sheet obviously, but we got another one so we were safe enough.’
Attention now turns to the back-to-back clashes with Shelbourne, with Tolka Park the venue for this Tuesday’s EA Sports Cup tie before Drogheda host Friday’s league clash.
Doyle insisted that, whatever team Clancy puts out for the cup clash, Drogheda will want to win, but inevitably the main focus is on the meeting of the second and third-placed teams in the league on Friday night.
‘They’re a good side, they’re scoring goals like us and they had a good win on Friday night [against Galway], so it’ll be interesting to see what happens,’ Doyle responded.
‘We’ll doing well at the moment, but we’re taking it game by game and Shels is the next one. Hopefully we can match them and get the three points.
‘Everyone is buzzing with confidence and that’s what a few wins does. When you’re on a roll the confidence is good, the atmosphere is good and the lads are happy. Everyone wants to play and everyone wants to train, everyone wants to be here and everyone is putting in a good shift.
‘That’s what happens when you win. When you lose, you have to stick together and come out and get a result like this [in Cobh] after dropping points last week [against Longford].
‘But we’re not going to get carried away. If we beat Shels we’ll go on to the next game and the next game and we’re not thinking about the end [of the season] at the moment.’