Friday 16th April 2021 Kick Off 7.30pm
Tomorrow evening we follow Tuesday night’s memorable 2-2 draw, when we travel to the North Coast to play Coleraine for the second time in 72 hours in another six pointer with second place up for grabs in the Danske Bank Premiership.
We need to end a run at the Showgrounds that does not make for pretty reading. Our last win of any sort there was in May 2016 when Alan Kernaghan’s team had a 2-1 win in a Europa League play off semi final through goals from Calum Birney and Curtis Allen, now of course a Coleraine player,
We have not won a standard league match at Coleraine since October 2013. That afternoon, the Bannsiders had gone into the lead just before half-time when defender Kevin Bradley turned the ball past Elliott Morris, but winger Jim O'Hanlon shot low for a 47th-minute equaliser and soon after that Mark Miskimmin ran through to make it 2-1. Coleraine later had midfielder Michael Hegarty sent-off for a two-footed tackle on Jordan Stewart before John McGuigan scored Glentoran's third goal late on to seal a 3-1 win.
Our first visit of this season to Ballycastle Road last Halloween ended in a disappointing 2-1 defeat. Having fallen behind in the opening few minutes to a header from defender Stephen O'Donnell, things got even worse for the Glens when midfielder Ben Doherty scored in first half injury time to give Oran Kearney's side a comfortable lead at the break. Glentoran were offered a way back into the game when Coleraine striker James McLaughlin was shown a straight red card on 62 minutes for a poor tackle on Glens loanee Bobby Burns, who unfortunately picked up a season ending injury as a result. But despite that man advantage, the Glens were not able to turn the deficit around, even though Jay Donnelly's header (the strikers first goal for the club) in the 89th minute did briefly offer some hope.
Martin Gallagher will again fill in between the posts in the absence of the injured Gareth Deane, while striker Mathew Shevlin will expect to retain his place up front after an impressive display in Tuesday's game, which would leave the experienced Eoin Bradley and former Glentoran favourite Curtis Allen to contend with places on the bench. Winger Josh Carson will be hoping his spectacular own goal at the Oval won't cost him his place in the side, while midfielder Ben Doherty could be in line to reclaim a place in the staring 11 after returning from injury as a sub on Tuesday. Striker James McLaughlin is likely to be an absentee, though, as he has missed the last few games through injury.
Mick McDermott: “Tuesday was a really solid performance in terms of quality, and we showed a lot of quality play, particularly in the first half which we dominated. In fact we dominated the whole game in what was one of our better performances of the season. What was most pleasing was that it was a really strong performance against a good team sitting in second place. I was disappointed by the very preventable goals we conceded, but the way the players have performed in recent weeks has been really good so there was a really strong dominant performances it was almost as dominant, especially in the first half, as our performance against Linfield here.
We would have been worth the win but that's the way it works if you don't take your chances early on. we had three or four goof chances early in the game and the score at half time could and should been 3-0 or 4-1 and neither would have flattered us. It took a fortunate own goal to equalise for us, but it was the very least we deserved from the game.
Tomorrow night will be a very different match on a very different pitch where its not to easy to play football. I think it's going to be a more physical battle on that surface but we’re going there for all 3 points with everyone fit apart from Conor and Dayle”,
Tomorrow night’s match will be streamed live on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport website
