Goal-scoring hero Joe Oguz says a tight one-week turnaround to the All-Ireland final will be no problem to an Errigal Ciaran side that thrives on pressure.
The postponement of the All-Ireland Club semi-final due to the Arctic weather conditions means that Sunday’s Croke Park decider comes hot on the heels of an absorbing extra-time epic against Dr Crokes.
But midfielder Oguz insists that the players are ready to go again and will be primed for the challenge they face against Cuala.
“In Tyrone, we’re used to that, we had one-week turnarounds against Clonoe and Killyclogher.
“The training’s done really at this point, it’s more tactics and stuff like that and we’ll take every minute.
“In the county championship final against Trillick, with the weather and stuff, it was pushed back five days and we were actually there ready to go, so at least we had a bit of time to think and plan again, and an extra week of training did us no harm.”
A first ever appearance in the club decider, not just for Errigal, but for any Tyrone club, represents a major breakthrough for a county that has traditionally fared poorly at provincial and All-Ireland level, a rare event that the men from Dunmoyle are determined to savour.
“It’s so special, it’s a short turnaround, but oh, this is insane, no words can describe it really.
“It’s not just for us as a team getting to Croke Park, it’s our team, it’s the whole community, it’s boys that are five, six, seven, and there’s boys that are 60 or 70 that haven’t been to Croke Park with Errigal and it’s about everybody, it’s the whole community.
“It’s right up there, obviously when you’re a kid and you’re dreaming of these things, but it’s very hard to believe it’s going to become reality, but we’re here now and we have every chance that we’re going to take it, hopefully.”
Oguz smashed home the goal that finally broke Dr Crokes at St Conleth’s Park, hitting the roof of the net in the second period of extra-time to put daylight between the sides and force the Munster champions to chase the game and leave themselves open at the back.
“I just thought try and keep it low, kind of keep it towards the crossbar, hit it hard and you never know what happens. I’m just glad it went in.
“It made them push out of even more and we found spaces and gaps and were able to work another three points from it and just give us a wee bit of a buffer, even though they got the goal.”
Despite conceding a late goal, Errigal held out, but it wouldn’t have been possible without another rescue job from Peter Og McCartan, whose late equaliser sent an epic tie to extra-time.
It was a remarkable repeat of the wing back’s late winning strike in the Ulster final against Kilcoo.
“He’s a special player, a big, massive, big-game player and when we needed to score Ogie was there to deliver.
“It’s probably how we describe ourselves, we never say die, we’re never beat and Ogie was able to pick us out of a hole in normal time and then we built on that and built the momentum.
“At times it was chaotic on both sides, but that’s just the nature of the game, it was just two teams going at it.
“There’s always going to be mistakes and we’re just glad that we were able to get over the line.”
