Glenavon v Glentoran
Saturday 1st September 2018, Kick Off 3pm
On Saturday Glentoran go to Mourneview Park on the back of two victories this week and looking to at least continue a four match unbeaten run.
Despite Glenavon’s stronger league campaign in the past few seasons, Lurgan has been one of our stronger away venues of late with just one defeat in our last nine league visits. That defeat was in April 2015. Last season both our visits to Mourneview took an identical pattern – an early lead for the home team overturned by two second half Glens goals then a late Glenavon equaliser for a 2-2 finish. Last August Robbie McDaid scored his first two Glens goals as a substitute while in March our goals were scored by Curtis Allen and John McGuigan.
Glenavon currently sit two points ahead of us in second with nine points, following three wins and a draw so far. Gary Hamilton has had an active summer in the transfer market but not in the high profile manner of previous windows. He has brought in defenders Dylan King (ex Motherwell) and Gary Muir (Gzira United, Malta), midfielders Aaron Harmon (from Glentoran), and Niall Grace (Institute), winger Conor McCloskey (Ballymena United) and striker Steo Donnelly from junior football south of the border.
Photographs by AM Photography NI
Ronnie McFall: “I was very pleased with the manner of our victory over Larne. They have a fit, largely full time squad with a number of quality players and it’s fair to say they’re a Premiership team playing in the Championship. It was always going to be a tough one but I’d say our performance deserved a win over the 90 minutes but definitely we were the stronger team in extra time. The match was also useful in that it gave Stevie Gordon, Sam Byrne and Joe Crowe their first starts and I thought they all did very well. A real boost was that Robbie McDaid had his first start after injury. He looked very sharp, threatened all night and made a brilliant interception, run and finish for his goal. It’s great to have Robbie fully back in contention.
As I said earlier in the week I’m delighted to have persuaded John Herron to join us. He’s played a lot of football at full time and high level and also he’s a very good lad. John’s international clearance is through and he looked sharp in training tonight. The transfer window is closing tomorrow but we’re still actively pursuing another signing. There’s nothing immediately imminent but there will be good players not fixed up yet so we’ll keep trying. I said all summer that we’d only sign players who would improve us in positions where we need it and we’ve stuck to that policy with the players we’ve brought in. That’s still the case.
Saturday will be a hard game as Glenavon are a good side who deservedly finished third last season. There’s no doubt Gary has done a very good job there and he’ll have them up for it, But we’ll be up for it too. After dropping points late against Cliftonville and Coleraine after being in good positions we know these are the matches that will challenge us most but we also know these are the sort of games we need to start winning to prove that we’re progressing the way I think we are,
The squad is basically all available apart from Conor Pepper who’s automatically suspended for one game under the new IFA system. It’s ridiculous that Conor has been booked in each of his first five games because he’s not a dirty player and he’s not a cheeky player either. He’s always involved in the play but he’s had no protection at all from referees so now he’s suspended and it’s just the start of September!
We’ll miss Conor but with the rest of the squad available we still have the players to do the job we need done on Saturday.”
