By Peter McGrath jnr
From a Castlewellan perspective, the second half—and in particular the final quarter hour—of Monday evening’s league game in Rostrevor was enthralling.
However, shortly after the final whistle, manager Tony Wilson was as calm and composed as ever, reflecting on the game before offering a searingly honest appraisal of what he has done to date with this Castlewellan group and what he hopes to achieve going forward.
Facing a very difficult situation at halftime, trailing by ten points having been comprehensively outplayed, Castlewellan came out all guns blazing and played with a huge level of desire and heart in the second period.
Casting his mind back to the changing room at half-time, Tony recounted: “It was a brilliant second half from the lads there. The exact words used at half-time can’t be printed but we asked for a performance, we asked for the lads to come out and stand up.” That, they most certainly got.
It was interesting—indeed refreshing and enlightening—that Wilson quickly moved on from the game to give an in-depth account of the philosophy that he and his management team have tried to bring this year and the challenges they have faced along the way.
Wilson stated: “We are a very young team, we’re in transition. When we got this job at the start of the year we knew that. Seven or eight of the more senior players had retired, so we’ve gave 13 debuts this year and, to be fair to a lot of the young lads, they stood up there in that second half and showed bottle that I haven’t seen this year, in fairness to them. I’ve just said to them that if they can keep effort going to the end of the year, we will be OK.”
In the full article Tony Wilson goes on to explain why Castlewellan’s focus is on next year’s league rather than the upcoming championship.
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