IT SAYS much about the team spirit Northern Ireland have that Olly Norwood rejects a compliment because it could be construed as a slight on his skipper Steven Davis.
When it’s suggested to him with a smile that the free kicks improved in the second-half of last Friday’s friendly against Belarus, with Norwood having replaced ‘Davo’ on those duties, he hesitates before replying with a laugh: “No, no, I’m not going to comment on that.”
Such togetherness extended to a collective determination to set up a particular scorer in that friendly. The crowd clearly wanted Will Grigg to score so much and the 25-year-old confirms the players felt exactly the same:
“I don’t think I’ve seen a bunch of lads wanting someone to score as much as that. It was a great finish - great bit of build-up play, great ball in from Niall [McGinn] and Griggsy - it was a tough finish, to be fair. He took it first time, which shows the confidence he’s playing with at the moment, he smashed it in.
“We wanted to get the song going - the song’s gone viral, it’s unbelievable, he deserves all the credit he’s going to get. Every time you see him, everybody sings it. It’s just as mad in there as it is on the outside. It’s good. The camaraderie in the squad is unbelievable, as you’d expect. Eleven games unbeaten, we want to keep that momentum going into the tournament.”
Taking that tally on from 10 proved very easy against Belarus, with the Reading midfielder recalling: “It was a good performance. I think at the start, they had a lot more ball than we wanted them to have, but they weren’t really going anywhere, they were passing it around the back for quite a while - and the first attack we had, we scored. Typical of how things are going at the moment. Great send-off, the fans came out in their numbers and it was nice to see everybody give us a good send-off.”
As he suggested about a goal coming from the first attack, everything appears to be going positively for Northern Ireland now, with all their strikers scoring and even friendlies being won and Norwood agreed with that assessment.
“It is, yeah, it’s amazing. That’s 11 games now unbeaten. It’ll be a more stern test against Slovakia [on Saturday], we’re under no illusions. No disrespect to Belarus, but Slovakia is going to be a really tough test. We’re building nicely now into June 12.”
Involvement in Euro 2016 is finally beginning to feel real, Norwood admitted, even though a training camp in Austria was their destination when they flew out from Belfast on Monday: “It will do. We had a couple of days with our families, met back up on Sunday to go to Austria. We’ve a week away, setting up for the Slovakia game and we’ll start to take shape. Looking forward to June 12.”
Asked what it would mean going into the tournament on a 12-match unbeaten run, the Burnley native responded confidently: “We don’t fear anybody, you know. I think people are starting to look at us now and take us seriously.
“Maybe it’s taken us four years to put ourselves in this position, but we’re in this position now and it’s a good position to be in. We want to keep the momentum going into the tournament, we’ve said that all along. There’s no better way than being unbeaten and we’ll see how long be can keep that stretch going on for.”
The Belarus game included more experimentation with formations, starting with three centre-halves, then switching to 4-4-2 in the second-half, but Norwood concluded all that matters is getting into the side to face Poland in Nice:
“Michael [O’Neill] wanted to change a couple of things, have a look at a few different things and the lads who came in did well. Michael obviously has a team to pick for June 12 and everybody will be doing what they can to make sure they’re in that team”.
Including not slagging off the captain, obviously.
