Saturday 18th March 2023
Kick Off 3.00pm
On Saturday we play our penultimate pre-split game when we face Carrick Rangers at the Loughview Leisure Arena for the second time in eleven days.
Carrick bounced back from last week’s heavy defeat by recording an important 1-0 win away to struggling Dungannon Swifts; a stunning David Cushley volley just before half time secured the points and kept Stuart King’s side two points clear of Glenavon in the race to secure the seventh place European Playoff spot.
Glentoran have enjoyed the upper hand in the meetings between the sides this term, racking up ten goals and conceding just once. Firstly a 5-0 win at the Bet McLean Oval in early October before last week’s 5-1 scoreline at Taylor’s Avenue. Remarkably, there have been nine different goal scorers for Glentoran across the two games, with Aidan Wilson, Jay Donnelly, Shay McCartan, Conor McMenamin, Paddy McClean, James Singleton, Danny Purkis, Bobby Burns and Rhys Marshall (2) all netting.
Midfielder Lloyd Anderson missed the win at Stangmore Park and former Glentoran players Steven Gordon and Curtis Allen has not featured since mid-February and mid-December respectively due to injuries.
Rodney McAree: “I was pleased to get the win against Ballymena on Tuesday night. I’d much rather the goal had come sooner and we’d made the match safe earlier, but at the minute for all sorts of reasons the result is what matters. One thing I found encouraging was that Tuesday was the first time since I took over that we’ve managed to grind out the result in that manner and to win under those circumstances. Winning ugly is not the way we’d prefer to do it but on this occasion players demonstrated they’re capable of doing it so it’s reassuring to know that.
I was pleased for Danny with his winner. Its been a frustrating time for him, waiting to get his chance at a start and both his performance and his stats showed what a great shift he put in. Danny puts a lot of effort into his condition and his performance. He’s robust, strong and he took his chance very well. He maybe needs a run of games to really get to his top level but he was a big player for us on Tuesday.
After the manner and margin of our win last week, there’s no doubt Carrick Rangers will want to seek revenge so we need to hit at least last week’s performance level if we want to take the three points. We’ve a pretty full squad of players and it was great to get Shay back on the pitch v Ballymena after his injury at Seaview. But there are always niggles at this stage of the season and as we’ve played six games in eighteen days I need to consider that in team selection. But we’ll go to Carrick with a strong squad ready for another battle”.
