Danske Bank Premiership: Cliftonville 0 Glentoran 2
ANOTHER weekend, another twirl of the merry-go-round that is this season’s Irish League title race.
This week, it was the turn of Cliftonville and Coleraine to feel the brunt of the season’s wildly unpredictable nature as Crusaders clambered to the top of the pile with a 6-1 win over Dungannon Swifts at Stangmore Park.
While Coleraine went down 2-0 to Institute in an early kick-off, Cliftonville blew their chance to move three points clear when they lost by the same score to 10-man Glentoran at Solitude.
As it is, the Crues are now top on goal difference and Reds manager Paddy McLaughlin says if his players were starting to believe the hype about themselves, Saturday’s wake-up call will do them the world of good.
“It’s a steep learning curve for us and it’s a grounding result because we were probably getting a wee bit carried away with ourselves, sitting in top spot in the league and a chance to go clear at the top if we had’ve got a result,” he said.
“So the result and the performance is grounding and it goes to show that we’re still a work in progress and we’ve a lot of work to do.”
Cameron Stewart poked home after just four minutes at Solitude to give Glentoran the lead before Chris Gallagher netted his first goal for the east Belfast club seven minutes after the restart. While the result was disheartening for Cliftonville, McLaughlin was even more upset with the performance.
“Saturday was frustrating and disappointing, not just the result but the performance too,” the Reds boss added.
“Sometimes you can take positives away from defeat, there was no positives to take away from yesterday’s performance. We were disappointing throughout the match, there was absolutely zero you could take away from it.”
Jamie Harney’s one-match suspension didn’t help Cliftonville at the back and McLaguhlin will be glad to have him back on the pitch when they travel to Windsor Park this weekend.
“The quality that Jamie Harney brings to the team, I don’t think he’s noticed until he’s not there,” he said.
“In terms of how it panned out over the 90 minutes, I don’t think it would’ve been as one-way as it was for Glentoran if Harney had’ve been on the pitch because there’s one thing you can guarantee, he’ll stand up and be counted when it’s put up to him.
“I think that’s what disappointed us most about yesterday, it was put up to us a bit and we had too many boys who didn’t respond and Jamie Harney certainly would’ve been one of the first to roll his sleeves up if that’s what was needed, so his loss was massive when it was put up to us and we went missing.”
With 10 minutes to go, Glentoran’s Hrvoje Plum was sent-off for two bookable offences, but Mick McDermott's side defended well to shut the home side out.
“You’re always hoping that we can convert a chance. We had plenty of the ball without really threatening,” McLaughlin said.
“But to be fair to Glentoran, they defended well, they defended for their lives and there’s things we could be taking away from Glentoran’s performance and adding to our own game. There’s things Glentoran did to us that we can probably do to others in the future.”
Elsewhere on Saturday, a late Josh Robinson goal kept Linfield on the coattails of the trio at the top with a 1-0 win over Larne. Carrick hammered Glenavon 6-2, while Warrenpoint grabbed a vital 2-1 win against Ballymena.
