We sat down with Oban Camanachd Manager, Gareth Evans, ahead of Sunday’s Tulloch Homes Camanachd Cup Semi-Final against Kingussie.

Gareth, it felt like a bit of a slow burner this year for Camanachd but – you’ve now won your last 7 matches, beating the likes of Lovat, Shiel and Kyles along the way – just how much confidence does that give you going into Sunday? 

It’s fair to say it has been a slow burner but taking into account the players getting used to new management and a few new faces to last years team. I think the penny dropped with a lot of the younger boys at Sheil that they can perform and get big results.

In fact, the last game you lost was against Kingussie – just missing out 1-0 thanks to a late James Falconer goal – what lessons will you be taking from that game? 

We battled away in that game without playing great although Kingussie were and are flying this season.

How is the squad looking, in terms of availability, and feeling ahead of Sunday?

The squad is looking in good shape boys have been training extremely well and are looking to perform on Sunday.

We just hope Scott McKillop wife Connie has baby McKillop soon haha!

Across the last 7 matches there have been 7 different goal scorers – how important is it for everyone to chip in to boost that goal tally, especially in the absence of Andrew McCuish this year? 

At start of season we really struggled to score especially against the bigger teams while creating chances so I wasn’t too worried,the players upfront have stepped up in the absence left by Papa.

That being said, Daniel Madej has hit 12 so far this season – is he the key man to break down this resolute Kingussie back line? 

Any player/team finds it hard to break down the Kingussie defence although Madej has been great for the team this year but he’ll be first to say it’s the hard work from the team that creates his chances.

A really exciting couple of weeks with the same opponent next week in the Artemis Macaulay Cup Final – does that play into the psychology at all ahead of Sunday? 

We are in a great position that probably not a lot of people thought we’d be in this season and we’ll certainly give it everything over the next couple of weeks, we’ll worry about the Macaulay on Monday morning.