Gort keeping low profile despite great local buzz

Gort chairman Martin Kerins confounds your opener pretty quickly.

It’s a given that any place with a team in an All-Ireland club semi-final goes nuts for the few days before the game, so the Galway town must be half-cracked this week, right? Wrong.

“There’s a good buzz around the place but to be honest, we’re trying to keep it low-key as a club,” said Kerins.

“It’s all new to the players, they haven’t been involved at this stage before, so we want to keep the pressure off them as much as possible.

“Obviously there was great delight when we won the title, it was our first since 1983, and we certainly enjoyed ourselves — the lads celebrated well, as you’d imagine.

“But we’ve also worked hard since then. We might have let our hair down in November but by the first week of December we were back out on the field training, and we had three hard weeks of physical work done before Christmas, so hopefully that’ll stand to us.”

There are a lot of family connections between that 1983 team and the current generation, as Kerins explains.

“Sylvie Linnane was on that team — people will remember him for his displays with the Galway team — and he has three sons on the squad. Joe Regan played in 1983 and his son Brian is the centre-back now. Gerry Lally has two sons on the team, and I played myself back then and my son is on the panel.

“I was talking to one of the other lads who played then and asked him to compare last year’s title to ’83 and he said, ‘it’s a lot sweeter seeing my son win it’.”

Given Clarinbridge’s All-Ireland club success last year, not to mention the shadow cast by a powerful Portumna side in recent years, did Gort come in a bit under the radar last season in Galway?

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” said Kerins.

“I’d feel we were a bit like Clarinbridge, knocking on the door a while and finally getting our chance.

“Having said that, Portumna are certainly a hard act to follow. I’d class them as one of the best club sides we’ve seen.

“We’d be hoping we’ll follow Clarinbridge’s lead — winning a championship here in Galway and then building on that in the All-Ireland series.”

Now that the All-Ireland series is here Kerins is concerned: “I’d be worried about the semi-final.

“I’ve no problem saying that. Looking at our team I’d think we have forwards who could do damage if we were able to reach Croke Park.

“The likes of Aidan Harte and Ollie Fahy are very good up front. Ger O’Donoghue is only just out of minor but he’s a very good forward as well. Croke Park would suit them, but first things first.”

They’ve got to overcome a lengthy hiatus since their title last November, for one.

“It’s a long break. Obviously you’d have to curtail your celebrations if you were out in the provincial series two weeks after your own county final, which we didn’t have to do.

“The other side of that is we’re a long time without a competitive game, unlike Coolderry.”

Kerins didn’t make it down to Nowlan Park for the Oulart-the-Ballagh versus Coolderry Leinster club final, but he saw enough to be impressed by the Offaly side.

“From what I saw on TV Oulart might feel they left it after them to a certain extent, they had a lot of play and a good few scoring chances.

“But that’s taking nothing away from Coolderry. They played well and kept plugging away and were well able to take the chances they made themselves. We’ll have nothing but the height of respect for them.”