Saturday 13th October 2018, Kick Off 3.00pm
Following the disappointment of our unfortunate home defeat on Monday night, we have the opportunity to bounce back with a visit to League Champions Crusaders on Saturday.
A win on Saturday would allow us to leapfrog the Crues into third place as Crusaders are one point ahead of us with a game more played. However our record against Crusaders in the Danske Bank Premiership has been worse than against any other club in recent years. In fact the last time we beat them home or away was in April 2014 when goals from Curtis Allen, John McGuigan and Danny McKee gave us a 3-0 win at the Oval. Surely it’s time to put that right.
Ronnie McFall: “I was disappointed not to get a result from Monday’s match with Linfield. It wasn’t a great game overall and the conditions made in hard for both teams. But we had the two best chances of the match and should have taken at least one of them whereas Linfield had one chance and they took it. That’s what “Big Two” matches are like. They’re tight and you only get something from them if you take the small number of chances that come your way. However for our performance over the 90 minutes I thought we deserved something out of the game and I want to particularly praise Marcus Kane for an outstanding performance from start to finish.
On Saturday we go to Seaview and we know we’ll get a hard match from the current champions. Curtis Allen was ill this week and missed some training while Nathan Kerr is away in Iceland with the Northern Ireland U21s. Curtis should make it. We know Crusaders are a good team but we always have a fair idea how they’ll set up so we’ve been working hard on that and I know the lads will be well up for it and will know how hard they’ll need to work to get the result I think we’re capable of getting there”.
