Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
HOLYWOOD GOLDEN ERA DAWNING
Fifth league win on the spin has boss Mcgeown excited for club who have been in doldrums for years
CONOR Mcgeown admits the potential at Holywood excites him with the club enjoying their best run of form in well over a decade.
Saturday’s 5-1 rout of their Spafield tenants Bangor Swifts was their fifth league win in a row, something they haven’t managed since they climbed up into the Premier Division as runners-up behind East Belfast in 2006.
The victory moved them level on points with fourth-placed Suffolk at this early stage of the season, and just six behind St Oliver Plunkett who currently occupy that final promotion place behind runaway league leaders Rosemount Rec.
Mcgeown shrewdly dodged any talk of promotion, it’s far too early for that, but he was happy to concede that things are looking up for his club, both on the field of play – where he and his assistant Mark Crawford successfully set about lowering the age profile of the squad – and off the pitch as well.
“We are in a wee bit of form and this was always going to be a big year for the club and me and Crawfy,” said Holywood’s 39-year-old manager.
“We needed to recruit and we did, but like anybody in August, we had a lot of holidays and unavailability so we basically wrote it off in a sense and said we would try to hit the ground in September.
“So since September, mid-september anyway, things have started to fall into place. That’s five in a row in the league and six from seven in the league and we had a cup run in the Steel & Sons where we got to the last 16, so slowly but surely we’re starting to get there.
“We are in a much better place with things like sponsorship as well, we have got new kits, new training gear, new matchday gear, so a big thanks to sponsors. But all those wee things make you feel like a club again, like a proper outfit, and they are all adding to it.
“But credit has to go to the players, they are buying into what we are about, they are training hard, they are young and they are socialising together and all the good teams I was part of in the past all had that, so that’s great.
“The average age of the side we put out against Newington [in the Steel Cup] was 21 and they acquitted themselves very well that day against a good outfit, so it’s all really positive.
“We’ll temper it with a wee bit of realism but obviously there are some very big games coming, a lot of sixpointers, but we’re really pleased with where we are at at the moment.”
Pressed on what success would look like this season at Spafield, Mcgeown said he would be content just to see them continue on their current upward trajectory.
After more than a decade of decline, which included four relegations in just six seasons and a dangerous flirtation with folding altogether, he believes it’s important they keep the momentum going.
“The target is just to move up the table,” he said.
“We like to think we are a big club, we’ve been about Intermediate for a while now, we should be looking up the table rather than looking over our shoulders.
“That’s us up to fifth now but all the guys above us, we’ve still to play twice.
“The target is to keep looking up the table and there’s no reason why we can’t go for a top four finish and just to be in the mix at the business end of the season would be great.
“We are getting old Holywood faces down watching again, and that’s sucthe cess in itself, but we want to push on, to be competitive at the top end of the table, and who knows, another run in the Clarence
Cup. That would be the target for us this season.”
Jude Mcavoy helped himself to a first half brace against the Swifts on Saturday with Justin Mccadden also on the scoresheet prior to the interval, before Aidan Gordon stepped off the bench in the second half to underline Holywood’s superiority with a double of his own.
“We had an excellent first half, we were 3-0 up at half-time and the game was pretty much dead and buried then,” said Mcgeown.
“It was a very good showing right from the start. They came back into it a bit in the second