By Kevin Herron
DROMINTEE coach Kevin Toale is adamant that their mindset ahead of their New Years Day decider of the FonaCAB Ulster Minor Tournament at St Pauls is not about winning, but putting stepping stones in place.
The Orchard outfit are bidding to land the trophy for the first time in their competition against 2002 winners Clontibret.
Ahead of the Thursday decider, Toale believes victory would be an enormous achievement and a reflection of the community effort within the club.
“The mindset here is we are not thinking of winning it, we are putting the stepping stones in place to achieve that- as are Clontbret at this stage” said Toale.
“What it would achieve would be enormous. It would be a very good reflection of the amount of work that has been put in by this team- not just this year but over many years. Also by parents, community etc – in Dromintee it is an absolute community effort”.
Toale was not in attendance at Clontibret’s semi-final win over Bredagh though acknowledged that there was a lot of content online on their opponents.
“I personally didn’t get down but there is that much online at the moment- I feel like I was” he admits.
“Clontibret are a very well coached, very disciplined and physical team. You don’t get to these finals by chance; you’ve to earn it, you’ve to forget that everyone is a county champion here.
“A small club like ourselves, a lot of people saying we are fighting above our weight, you don’t go into a final to lose”.
Toale was more than aware that his side were being written off on social media in the build-up to their St Stephens Day win over St Canice’s but was determined that it wouldn’t come into the changing room and praised the self-belief of the team for their comeback win.
“It was always going to be very much touch and go, I know coming in here we were the underdogs” he reflected.
“I suppose the title of underdogs which was on many of the facebook, Tick-Tok etc- there was a lot of stuff saying that we didn’t have much of a chance.
“That didn’t come into the changing room. We came down here with a lot of belief, a huge amount of respect for Dungiven and their coaches- I think their coaching especially- they deserve great credit. They presented a very formatable team for us.
“Going in at half-time we were four points down and we had utter self-belief that we were going to do this. The character of those boys is beyond good coaching. Good coaching presents, but their character stood up at the end there, and full credit to them”.
One of the many qualities that Toale was impressed with was his side’s discipline and structure throughout the game.
“In this sort of Championship football, at this time of the year it can be the proverbial wild-west during a match and it’s a case of keeping discipline” Toale explained.
“People were asking us are you motivated. Of course we are motivated, but it wasn’t motivation it was discipline and apply discipline and continue to the very end. They had a structured game plan, we stuck to it and it paid off for us”.