County Antrim Shield Round One
Saturday 10th October 2020, Kick Off 3.00pm
At long last the 2020-2021 season starts on Saturday when Bangor visit the Oval in the first round of the Toals County Antrim Shield.
Although the Seasiders are currently in the Bluefin Sports Premier Intermediate League, we can all remember their last competitive visit to the Oval, in October 2014 at the same stage of this competition. On that occasion a Jim O’Hanlon equaliser wasn’t enough to give the then Championship side a 2-1 win. Only current skipper Marcus Kane survives at Glentoran from the thirteen players who featured that night.
On the other hand, we opened our pre-season series of friendlies with a 6-2 home win over our visitors with goals from Paul O'Neill, Dale Gorman, Robbie McDaid, Andrew Mitchell, Cameron Stewart and Rory Donnelly. So, the Glens should go into this one with a certain degree of optimism.
There are a number of former Glens U20 players in the current Bangor squad, including Jack Henderson, Pearse McVarnock and Matthew Johnston. But we’re also likely to get a nostalgic look at a bona fide Oval legend – none other than 41-year-old Michael Halliday! In a decade at the Glens “Doc” made 468 appearances, scoring 141 goals, including two Irish Cup Final winners. So, no matter what age he is, this lad will always need watching!
Mick McDermott: “After the longest close season on record, its finally great to be able to play in front of at least some of our loyal supporters today and to finally get to kick off the 2020-2021 campaign.
I think we’ve strengthened well over the close season to build on our Irish Cup Final win and the progress we made in Europe. The objective has always been to move Glentoran fulltime so the players who came in are all in on that basis and have been training together five days a week. We’ve also extended the contracts of a number of the boys who were already with us and who did very well last season. So, I’m happy with the summer business in both directions.
It’s the County Antrim Shield today, and all cup matches are important to us. I know it’s a long time since we won this trophy so rest assured, we’ll be taking this game very seriously as we hope to progress as far as we can. We have three lads – Paul O’Neill, Caolan Marron and Bobby Burns – away with the Northern Ireland Under 21s and a couple more still recovering after knocks in pre-season. But we’re very much looking forward to having the full squad together for the start of the league next week”.
