Marty Cox insists Holywood won’t let title talk distract them after Saturday’s 8-0 rout of Suffolk sent them three clear at the top of Division 1C.
Excitement may be building around the club as the prospect of a title challenge draws ever closer, but the 24-year-old skipper is adamant they can’t let any of that hype affect them.
For now, and for the rest of the season, Cox says he and his team-mates will do their talking on the pitch, like at the weekend there when Josh Craig’s four-goal haul inspired their demolition job on one of the league’s strugglers.
Even so, there’s no getting away from the fact Holywood are looking good, boasting as they do the best record out of any of the teams still in the hunt – just five dropped points so far.
“We had a couple of games in hand there and we were just plugging away at those,” explained Cox on Holywood’s rise into first place.
“We were level on points with clubs for a while there but I think this weekend is the first time we’ve pulled ahead a bit.
“We just need to keep doing what we are doing, take it one game at a time. When we celebrate on a Saturday, once Tuesday comes, we’re focused on the plan for the next game.
“Every game is different, and Conor (McGeown) and ‘Crawfy’ (Mark Crawford) have different plans for each game.
“The players they have brought down to the club this season have really improved us and everyone here is committed to the club.”
Cox (pictured right) has been with Holywood since he was 17, and so he can remember when things weren’t so good.
“I’ve been here when it was just about staying in 1C so it’s great to see us pushing on,” he added.
Off the field, the Spafield Park side have made huge strides, with the academy flourishing and numbers at training with the senior sides extremely strong.
And Cox reckons much of their upturn in form this season can be put down to the honesty in the squad. The players put the hard yards in during Covid and over the summer, with that commitment now paying dividends.
“I think a lot of it is attributable to the work we put in during the lockdown,” he said.
“After the first lockdown, when were back training with social distancing, we were up the Holywood hills, running is all we could do, no contact training, a couple of times a week, up Redburn hills as well, cold dark winter nights doing hill sprints, and now you can really see it, particularly in our second half performances when other teams are tiring, that we have that bit of an advantage because of the work we put in.
“I feel it myself, even looking back a few years ago, I wasn’t anywhere near as fit as I am now.”
Looking ahead, Cox acknowledges that nothing in the Amateur League is won lightly, with Holywood braced for a battle over the run-in.
“All of the teams have the ability to take points off each other,” he said. “That’s not even just the teams at the top but the ones lower down as well, the Bloomfields and the Wellingtons.
“It took a last-minute winner two weeks ago at Wellington to get us the points.
“Every game is difficult and this week, we have Ballymacash Rangers (in the Intermediate Cup) which we’re looking forward to, it’s good to get games like this just to measure our progress.”
