Pomeroy Vs. Gortin – Denver’s View

It was great to start the season by picking up 2 valuable home points and the lads will hope to build on that over the coming weeks. One man who wasn’t available due to injury was mercurial defender Denver Nugent. It’s fair to say that when you take a step back from the action, you can see so much more going on all over the field, so with that in mind, we caught up with Denver to get his inside track on Sunday’s league opener:

I was fairly confident leading up to the game, as the lads had put in the hard yards and this panel is full of talent, but when I woke early on Sunday morning and saw the wind and possible rain I became a little apprehensive as Gortin are renowned for their physicality and the gusty gales would possibly favour them.

We were playing with the wind in the first half so I thought to myself we need to get off to a flyer and build up a good lead going in at halftime, possibly 8 points if we could. We started very brightly and from where I was sitting I thought we had the lions share of the possession, but more importantly we were in control of the possession right from the defence out.

Gortin struggled against the breeze and we took advantage with some great running from deep and free taking by Hugh McNamee, this seemed to settle any start of season nerves. Ciaran McKenna finished off an excellent length of the field move with an exquisite shot to the roof of the net.

Then suddenly against the run of play Gortin got a goal but once again I was impressed by our response, the lads kept their heads up and we went up the field and scored two more points before half time. Our lead was only 6 and not the 8 points I thought we required but after the first half I was still quietly confident.

Kieran McGeary was deployed as a sweeper from the start of the second half and this worked excellently. It nullified any real threat Gortin had and he put in a superb second half performance, not only sweeping up but also contributing to the attack. On one occasion he received a ball from big Ja up the side line and turned a few men inside out and with his “weaker” foot hit the most delightful pass to Ollie who then set up a point. It is tough not playing but getting to watch that type of football against such a strong breeze was a pleasure. Fair dues to Gortin though they kept coming at us when they got the ball and for their efforts got two fortuitous goals. Not quite sure what happened as I haven’t got speaking to John “boy” McCourt yet about it, but it’s one or in this case two of those things. John did pull off an immense save in the lead up to the third goal though.

The goals kept Gortin in the game but once again our response was fantastic, we scored two points straight after the first goal and then after the second when our lead was reduced to just a point we went the length of the field and got another goal. I know it was tight for a few minutes but I always felt we had control of the game and if needed Paddy could turn to a very strong bench. The all-round team performance in the second half was very impressive, everyone played well and worked hard as a unit and maintained possession very well. Any day you only concede 6 scores is a good day at the office. Hopefully the next time we are discussing a game I will be giving my opinion on it from a different perspective.