Owen Roes boss wants a more clinical edge

A MORE clinical edge in front of the posts is being demanded from Owen Roes manager Ronan McLaughlin as they get set to head to O’Neill’s Healy Park tomorrow night (Fri) to face Killeeshil in the quarter-finals of the Intermediate Championship.

While the Donegal native was satisfied at the character and determination displayed in their 1-11 to 0-10 triumph over Gortin in the first round, the Glenmornan men could have made things more comfortable for themselves.

Captain Cathal McShane missed a first half penaly, while several other goalscoring opportunities were spurned which allowed their opponents to hang in there until the final whistle.

Though Owen Roes got away with it a fortnight ago, McLaughlin cautions that they must find a more ruthless streak in the final third if they are to prolong their Championship journey.

“We started off like a house on fire and had three or four good goal chances in the first half. Cathal missed the penalty, and Tony Devine came running through once, as did Ronan McNulty another time. In the Championship you always think are we going to rue those misses. I did tell the boys at half-time that the positive thing was we were getting those chances but we had to be more clinical.”

McLaughlin, who took over the managerial reigns at the start of the season when Paddy Campbell stepped away, has been impressed with the attitude and application of the squad from day one and felt that but for conceding some late scores, they could have figured higher up in the Division Two table.

“I came in a bit late this year and just tried to build on what was aleady in place. The boys got to the Championship Final last year so the quality is already there. They always produce a top class effort and they throughly deserved their win over Gortin.

“ In the last couple of weeks we had been giving away scores in the last few minutes of matches which had cost us victiories. So it was great to see the lads closing the game out the way they did. Gortin is a good hard team.

“They finished fifth in the league. But we kept tagging on scores to keep ahead of them. I thought we worked very hard. It was a tight game but it was great just to get over the line.”

While there is a posse of East Tyrone teams regarded as the front runners in the race for the Paddy Cullen Cup (Eglish, Edendork, Galbally) McLaughlin feels that on their day Owen Roes are perfectly capable of holding their own.

“I only watched a couple of games on video from last year. But from what I have seen since coming in we are more than a match for anyone on our day. It’s just when we meet the better teams we up our game but when we meet the supposed lesser teams we tend to drop to their level. The trick is to try and keep it around that 8 out of 10 performance everytime we go out onto the field. Hopefully that is the start of it.”

While Friday night’s opponents Killesshil were given the fright of their life by lowly Cookstown in the first round, McLaughlin knows from recent painful experience that the St Mary’s will keep pegging away until the sixty plus minutes are completed.

“We went down to Killeeshil a couple of weeks ago. We were 1-12 to 0-12 up and with the last kick of the game they got a goal so we hope to learn from that and realise that they will keep going to the final whistle. We have to do the same.

“They are a decent, solid side, as good as ourselves. We are no world beaters but we will be in there battling to the very end. It is going to
be another 50/50 game like Gortin was.”