Saturday 23rd February 2019, Kick Off 3.00pm
On Saturday we try to bounce back from Monday’s late collapse with a visit to the north coast.
It is nearly three years since our last win at the Showgrounds - a 2-1 win at the Showgrounds in May 2016 through goals from Curtis Allen and Calum Birney. There is no doubt we should have done so on our last visit, last November when we were leading 1-0 through a Robbie McDaid goal with Coleraine reduced to ten men for the whole second half. Slack defensive play allowed Darren McAuley to equalise and we were unable to make our extra man count. The third time in as many games this season we lost a lead against this opposition. On the positive side we haven’t lost to them with league draws home and away and a win on penalties at the Oval in the Bet McLean League Cup.
Coleraine had a busy January window with a number of high profile signings such as Jamie Glackin (Crusaders), former International Dean Shiels (Derry City), Ben Doherty (Derry City) and Dylan Davidson from ourselves but they have lost Ciaron Harkin to Institute and our main tormentor of the past few seasons, Darren McAuley to Inverness Caledonian Thistle. They have won just one of their last five league games and we meet them on the back of three consecutive league defeats, to Crusaders, Linfield and Dungannon Swifts. Despite that they are still comfortably in the top half of the table.
Gary Smyth: “It’s been genuinely hard getting over that last ten minutes on Monday night. Without our performance being anything special I felt we were pretty well in control for most of the second half and under no real pressure from Glenavon. To be honest, after 80 minutes I would have been disappointed with a draw so I was absolutely gutted at the end. They put us under a bit of pressure in the first half, but we dealt with it well. Dwayne had only one save to make and it was a very good one. We got our goal at a good time, six or seven minutes before the interval. I thought we totally bossed the second half, which developed into a nothing affair. If we’d defended that throw in properly I don’t think we’d have been in any trouble. "But our defending left a lot to be desired. We didn't deal with the throw-in and we didn't deal with the bouncing ball. We’ve lost far too many leads that way this season. If we want to be better, move on and move up the table, we need to be a lot better than that. Had we won that match 1-0, people would have gone away and thought it was comfortable.
We’re playing Coleraine on Saturday. Despite the gap between us in the table we haven’t lost to them in our three matches so far this season. To be honest we should have held on and beaten them in the two draws in the league so we’ll approach it positively on Saturday. Willie Garrett is touch and go after the injury he picked up on Monday night. It’s not a serious one nut just a bit awkward for Willie right now. Paul O’Neill is out as the U20s need to play two more matches before his suspension is up. Elliott has been on the bench for a couple of weeks but his back injury hasn’t cleared up as well as we’d like. That means young Paul McLaughlin comes into the squad for the first time. Paul is just coming 18 but he’s a great young keeper who’s been at the club since he was ten years old. It’s good to see lads from the Academy getting their chance and I hope we’ll see a lot more of it going forward.”
