AIRTRICITY LEAGUE SOCCER – GARY SHAW INTERVIEW
Back to where it all began for Shaw
By Daire Walsh
AFTER almost a decade of service in the League of Ireland, Gary Shaw is thrilled to be returning to where it all started.
Having initially made his bow in senior football as an 18-year-old at Bray Wanderers in August 2010, the Newbridge man will enjoy his second coming with the Seagulls when they kick-start their First Division campaign with a trip to Cabinteely on Friday night (Stradbrook, 7.45pm).
“I’ve come full circle now. They’re a great club, a community club. They’ve obviously had their ups and downs in the last 10 years, but they were always a club with a good reputation and good people involved. I’m looking forward to it now. It has obviously been a long off-season as every League of Ireland player will tell you,” Shaw acknowledged.
“Both teams [Bray and Cabinteely] have lost players and both teams have added some good players to their squads. I know Stradbrook has rugby on it during the winter months. I’m not sure what kind of condition the pitch will be in, but it’s the same for both teams. I’m sure both teams will want to get off to a good start, because obviously it’s a shorter season now.
“Our sights are set on winning the league. When they’re your targets and they’re your goals, you need to be picking up points everywhere you go.”
Following his promotion from the second-tier with Longford Town in 2014, Shaw spent five consecutive seasons in Irish football’s top-flight. Additionally, the 14 league appearances he made during his first spell with Bray were all in the Premier Division.
Dropping a level may seem like a come down for sorts, especially when he was Shamrock Rovers’ Player of the Year as recently as 2017. Yet as Shaw explains, the current league standing of the north Wicklow men had little or no bearing on his decision to join them.
“The whole Premier/First Division thing wasn’t an issue. It was absolutely not the case at all. I met two or three other clubs in the off-season, spoke to them. There was a Premier Division club there that wanted to take me on but with a bit of travel involved, I felt that the time wasn’t right.
“Maybe if I was younger and didn’t have a young family, it could have been an easier choice. You have to look after your family and make sure the house is in order. Bray was a right fit for me and I was happy to go with it, even though they were in the First Division,” said Shaw.
Shaw arrives at the Carlisle Grounds on the back of a frustrating one-season stint at St Patrick’s Athletic. From 35 appearances in all competitions for the Saints, the centre-forward contributed just two goals.
Rather than pinpointing one specific issue, Shaw believes there were a number of factors that led to a disappointing time at the Inchicore club.
“It was a strange season. There was such optimism at the start. There was some great signings, there was a great fella in Harry Kenny at the helm. I knew Harry before he came to Pat’s and I know his brothers as well. Everything seemed to be in working order and there was great potential there. For whatever reasons, things didn’t work out.
“Players couldn’t reach the heights that they had before. That’s myself included. That’s the way football goes sometimes and it was a knock-on effect then and with form, we just couldn’t pick up form when it was really needed.
“Obviously then Harry went towards the end of the season. Stephen O’Donnell took over and changed things around. When a new manager comes in, he has his own ideas and that’s just the way football goes. Absolutely no hard feeling on anything whatsoever. Other lads will tell you that, they had to move on. That was the case for me and then you don’t dwell on these kinds of things.”
Indeed, Shaw is ready to put his 2019 struggles in the rear mirror and place all of his focus on a promotion charge with Bray. His return to the Garden County sees him linking up once again with Gary Cronin – a former team-mate and assistant manager at Longford.
With his namesake in the Seagulls hot seat – and experienced faces like Paul Keegan and Aaron Barry within their ranks – Shaw is convinced they can take on all comers in this year’s First Division.
“Gaz knows the story, he knows how to win the league and he knows what it takes. He’s added some decent young players, hungry players. He has a backroom team there as well that will push us on. Our target is to win the league. Hopefully with all those ingredients, we can put it together and go and achieve that,” said Shaw.