Danske Bank Irish Premiership
AFTER a stop-start 16 months in the Irish League, Matthew Fitzpatrick feels like he is finally beginning to prove his worth, and hopes a recent purple patch can continue when Glenavon face fourth-placed Larne at Mourneview Park today (3pm).
Fitzpatrick – who has been one of Antrim’s star men in recent years - found the net in a 1-1 draw with former club Coleraine last week, just days after bagging a 73rd minute winner as the Lurgan Blues toppled Glentoran.
The 26-year-old teacher moved to Mourneview Park last summer in a bid to get more game-time and, while huge progress has been made, Fitzpatrick knows he has the potential to improve even more.
“I’m still adapting,” he said.
“It’s a couple of levels of a jump and I hadn’t played football in six or seven years so simple things have taken me a while… I’m still learning because I look back every couple of weeks and think ‘I’m doing stuff now that I wouldn’t have done then’.
“There’s a lot of stuff technically but a lot of it is also in-game things – positional sense, knowing where to be, what to do, how to play to suit our team.
“And a big part of it is learning through making mistakes but because of that I feel like I’m improving as time goes on. That’s only happened through playing.
“That was the problem at Coleraine, I just wasn’t playing enough. I understood why I was in and out at Coleraine - they were second in the league, they were challenging in the League Cup, in the Irish Cup, so I wasn’t complaining.
“But I knew if I was going to improve or do anything in the Irish League I needed to be playing every week. It would’ve been easy for me to just go back and play Gaelic after but I wanted to prove to myself that I could play at this level.”
Glenavon boss Gary Hamilton is now reaping the benefits of that decision and Fitzpatrick hopes that, with seven games to go, the eighth-placed Lurgan Blues can go on to push towards the top six.
“The aim is to be in the play-offs for European football – we’ve had some brilliant performances, we could be higher up than we are but that’s our own fault.
“We just want to be consistent towards the end of the season and hopefully that leads us as high up the table as possible.”
Elsewhere today, Cliftonville face another major test as they host a Coleraine side who are continuing to nibble on the heels of league leaders Linfield.
The Bannsiders currently sit seven points off the Blues but have two games in hand while Paddy McLaughlin’s Reds are in fifth, with Larne and Tuesday’s opponents Glentoran in their sights.
Mick McDermott’s Glens welcome struggling Crusaders to The Oval, aiming to inflict a fourth consecutive league defeat on Stephen Baxter’s side, who slipped down to sixth after defeat to Dungannon earlier in the week.
Dean Shiels’s Swifts will aim to build on that win when they travel to The Showgrounds to take on seventh-placed Ballymena, while Warrenpoint Town bid to edge further clear of the relegation picture against Carrick Rangers at the Loughshore Hotel Arena.
In the evening kick-off, struggling Portadown welcome David Healy’s table-topping Blues to Shamrock Park, with both desperate for points for entirely different reasons.
