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Team Talks: Hrvoje Plum

Mon, 25/05/2020 - 01:22

With everyone away from the Oval for an undetermined period, we have decided to bring Glentoran supporters some of the most compelling content from the multi award winning Glentoran Gazette. We hope you will enjoy the stories and player interviews we bring and that it will encourage you to buy a Gazette at our home matches when football returns. Many thanks to the Glentoran Supporters Committee (1923) for use of this material. The "Team Talks" series will consist of interviews with current squad members with John Grayden this season.

Hrvoje Plum

interview with John Grayden

It’s no exaggeration to say that Hrvoje Plum has become something of a fans’ favourite with his Exocet-like free kicks.

But believe it or not the midfielder who has been unerringly accurate from dead ball situations – three of his set piece goals featured in BBC Northern Ireland’s September goal of the month reel - was once upon a time a winger.

Like several of the players who have shipped up at the Oval in the last year the 25-year-old Croatian was out of the game for almost a season with a serious injury.

“I was with Croatia’s biggest club Dinamo Zagreb playing as a winger when I suffered a knee injury,” he told me over a coffee in a city centre café. “I was a lot faster before the injury which put me out of the game for eight months. When I came back the club converted me into a midfielder.”

The Croatian under 19 international also suffered an abdominal injury last season but regained his fitness before his move to the Glens in July, the first time he has played football outside his home country.

Hrvoje – his name is pronounced her-wo-yea and is derived from a word which means Croat – has settled in a downtown Belfast apartment with his 22-year-old Croatian girlfriend Nicolina who is helping him learn English.

“My English is getting better each day,” said Hrvoje who added that he is also picking up the language from John Herron, a remark that brought a laugh from the table which also included goalkeeper Marijan Antolovic who at times acted as a translator. “Yes, I know he speaks Scottish,” said Hrvoje.

The man who has played for NK Sesvete, NK Locomotiva, Cibalia, NK Dugopolje and NK Osijek after his two-year spell at Dinamo is happy in Belfast. “Everything is good here. It’s a nice place and the accommodation is very good,” he added.

While Hrvoje follows his career as a professional footballer, Nicolina is looking for work in the architecture or engineering fields.

At their new home overlooking the river Lagan the couple follow a typical footballer’s diet. “Nicolina cooks a lot of the meals, usually involving pasta, rice, chicken and fish,” said Hrvoje.

While things have run smoothly off the park, it’s been a different matter on the field while he comes to terms with the style and rhythm of Irish League football.

“The game here is a lot different to what I’ve been used to,” Hrvoje said. “At home it’s much more of a passing game with the ball on the ground most of the time.

“Here it can be up in the air a lot like during the Crusaders game. I’ve also been used to playing on grass so playing on artificial surfaces is different and takes time to get used to.

“I could see how Crusaders players were used to the surface a lot more than our team. They are training on it every day and playing on it a lot more than we are. Those kind of things can make a difference to how a game turns out,” Hrvoje said.

Like most of the players from abroad he doesn’t have a car here so he is spending most of his time in Belfast.

“Marijan and I live in the same apartment block in the city centre so we often go for coffee together at a place we have found at Victoria Square. John Herron used to live in our block but recently he moved to another apartment close by.”

Hrvoje and Marijan come from the same area of eastern Croatia and it’s not the only thing they have in common.

While Hrvoje was out of the game for almost a season, Marijan has spent two years of his 13-year career on the sidelines due to knee and hand injuries. In fact, the two got to know each other a little at NK Osiek last year when Marijan was recovering from his latest injury.

They also share the fact that both fathers fought in the Balkan War of the 1990s and thankfully survived while both boys were displaced by the conflict. Marijan, from Vinkovci, moved to Germany with his family as a toddler while Hrvoje, who wasn’t born when the war broke out, was taken as a baby to live on the Dalmatian coast near Istra.

His family came from near Vukovar on what is now Croatia’s eastern border with modern day Serbia and the scene of one of the first and vicious battles of the war.

“Where I come from was virtually burned to the ground in the fighting,” Hrvoje said. “With my father away fighting my mother took us to live on the other side of Croatia.

The midfielder whose elder brother Ivan plays as a winger for NK Mladost Ceric, is contracted at the Glens until the end of the season. “The club have an option to retain me but it’s too early in the season to talk about that,” he added.

Footnote: This article was originally published before Hrvoje signed his contract extension for 2020-21.