With the rain through the wee closing down venues we were moving from Victoria Park which was flooded to Mallusk to play table toppers Ballyclare.
We were optimistic after a good battling performance against St Pat’s the week before but this match was over at half time as we never turned up in the first half. We found ourselves 3 : 0 down in the first ten minutes as we struggled to get into this match and were punished by a very good Ballyclare team and at half time it was 5 : 0.
We told the boys at half time that we needed to up our work rate as know one had turned up in the first half so we told them to go out and put some pride into the second half and they did. For the first 20 minutes of the second half we played some good football and created a good few chances but couldn’t find the back of the net. Then in the 53rd minute Ballyclare made it 6 : 0. Then on the 60th minute Ballyclare was awarded a penalty, poor, poor decision by a Referee who rarely left the half way line and where he was well behind play he could have never called a penalty but he did but Jai Sykes did what he is renowned and saved the penalty. The boys kept prodding even though we lost Stuart Hannah early in the game when he went over on a divot on the pitch and twisted his ankle and Edward Muldrew had to come off with a tweet to his hamstring, so with on subs left they had to dig deep and they did. Ballyclare grabbed another goal with two minutes left.
Full Time : 7 . 0
Managers Comments:
This is by far our worst ever performance in the six years this team has been together. We need to work harder boys and work with and for each other. I know we are better than this performance and you all know it as well. Everyone needs to think what they can do to their own game to improve the team performance.
