St Michael’s captain Brandon Horan is hoping that the hard work that the squad has put in at training since the Christmas period will reap reward when they take on Abbey CBS on Saturday in the MacRory Cup quarter-final.
St Michael’s performed well in the league stages of the competition to finish top of their section but they have worked hard to try and improve further since the league concluded.
“The first target was always to get through the league and make it to the quarter-final,” said Horan. “We worked hard over Christmas, both indoor and outdoor sessions, to get ready for the game and we feel we are coming together as a team and are gelling well. This is the time that you want to peaking and that is what we have been aiming for.We’ve had a few challenge matches and we are a lot stronger now than when we started out at the start of the year.”
The only disappointment St Michael’s have endured so far was the league semi-final defeat to Omagh CBS but Horan is confident that they will have learnt from that loss.
“Mr Corrigan told us that a lot of lessons were learnt that day. We have looked at it, we looked at the stats and we know where we went wrong and we’ll hopefully improve that for the quarter-final,” he added.
The St Michael’s captain stresses that despite having beaten Abbey well in the league stages, they are not looking any further ahead than this game and he feels they will have to be on their game to reach the last four.
“It’s all about taking it a game at a time. We will have to be in tip top condition to beat them and we’ll have to give it everything to progress to the semi-finals.
“We know that they are a defensive team so we will have to look at how we are going to break them down. It’s a quarter-final of the MacRory Cup, they will be up for it and we know we will have to be on top of our game to get through it.”
Enniskillen Gaels player Horan won an Ulster Schools’ All Star at midfield this year and is certain to be one that manager Dom Corrigan will want a big performance from but he states that as long as the team win he doesn’t mind how he plays.
“It is all about the team performance and as long as we win I don’t mind how I play, it is just about the team,” he said.