Saturday 7 September
Kick Off 3pm
Off we go to Stangmore Park on Saturday for what should be another cracking game.
Rodney McAree’s Swifts have enjoyed a solid start to the league campaign; they suffered narrow defeats away to Linfield and Cliftonville but opened the campaign with a home draw against Coleraine and have beaten Ballymena United at home and - most recently - Loughgall away last weekend and sit in fifth place in the early season table.
The Swifts' player turnover this summer was relatively low in comparison to most other Premiership sides. On the departures front, talented forward Rhyss Campbell moved to Coleraine and the experienced Chris Hegarty and Ryan Harpur announced their retirements. They also lost goalscoring midfielder Ben Gallagher after he departed for Australia and signed for Mandurah City.
Glentoran fans will be familiar with some of the new arrivals, with midfielder Gael Bigirimana joining permanently from Young Africans YC and winger Leon Boyd and goalkeeper Alex Henderson moving from the Oval at the end of the transfer window last week. The experienced Danny Wallace adds to McAree’s defensive options - along with the returning Dylan King - after leaving Glenavon over the summer. Another shrewd piece of business is the acquisition of former Newry City midfielder John McGovern, who scored the decisive second goal at Lakeview Park last week.
The Glens picked up maximum points on our two league visits to Stangmore Park last season; second half goals from Marcus Kane and Junior cancelling out Ben Gallagher’s first half penalty two days before Christmas before a much more comfortable 3-0 win in mid-March ; Shay McCartan, Junior and former Swifts winger Niall McGinn all netting one apiece.
Former Glens midfielder James Knowles has missed the last two games after being involved in a car accident prior to the game with Ballymena United but thankfully the other three players involved (Wallace, Thomas Maguire and goalkeeper Declan Dunne) were able to return in time to be named on the substitutes bench at Loughgall.
Declan Devine: “Last Saturday against Cliftonville was a very good one against one of the best teams in the league. We started very positively and well both before and after JJ scored his wonderful goal but more than anything else I was very pleased with our work ethic both with and without the ball and also the style of football we played for much of the game. The whole team were pretty much out on their feet by the end so we really needed the fans to get loudly behind us. They did and that really geed the boys through a tough last ten minutes or so. That’s what we want the Oval to be like every week on and off the pitch.
"At the Welders the big thing was getting the win in a knock out competition. The Welders were excellent but we should have got the game won in 90 minutes as we created more than enough chances before James got our equaliser. He deserved it for his performance. But it was good to be able to give our three new lads and Andrew Mills their first start and also good to see Jay get on the scoresheet with our first one.
"For Saturday we know the quality Rodney has in his squad and like ourselves they’re coming into this one on the back of a couple of good wins, so it’ll be another tough one against another good team but if the lads play as well as they did against the Reds we can come away with the result we want.
"Finally, Josh Kelly successfully came through his knee operation this week. He’ll be out for some months but being the sort of person he is I know he’ll deal with this positively and bounce back well from this setback.”
