it all: Tumilty

Mark Tumilty’s side have only dropped two points in their opening 11 fixtures, already beating Garvey at Havelock back in September. Garvey, however, are still hot on their heels, four points behind but with a game in hand.

Tumilty reckons whoever takes the spoils on Saturday will be the ones to lift the trophy come the end of the Ulster Premier League season.

He said: “It’s massive. To me, it’s a case of winner takes all. If Garvey win this game, could I see them dropping any more points? Probably not, no. At least we have the draw to fall back on but they’ll feel like they have to win the game.”

Tumilty is hoping to have a bigger squad of players to choose from this weekend as top-scorer Steven Dowds spent much of Saturday’s victory over Inst on the bench, nursing a hand injury.

“We’ve got a lot of players out at the minute but we’re hoping we’ll have a few of them back. Hopefully Stevie will be back in as well as Jonny McKee,” he said.

With them in the squad, Tumilty is confident his side has what it takes to claim what would be a potentially title-deciding three points.

He said: “Garvey showed a lot of bottle to come back from 2-0 down at Cookstown and win 3-2 but if we show what we know we’re capable of, we should have enough to win the game. With players like Philip Brown, Matthew Bell, Eugene Magee and Steven Dowds, we are capable of going wherever we want and winning. Our top players will have to perform though.

“There should be a great atmosphere on Saturday. We’re all looking forward to it.”