Sending off cost us the game
Manager's View
There’s no doubt that the sending off cost us the game. But, it’s now between myself, Alan Fraser, the board and the player himself. We’ll deal with it behind closed doors.
The game started off even enough but we had just started to get on top of them and we looked quite comfortable at the time of the red card.
When Trevor (Molloy) got himself sent off, we went on and scored a goal before half-time through Gary Liggett but, in saying that, it put us under pressure.
Ballymena came out in the second half with their tails up and it gave them an impetus to keep going.
After their second goal, we had to put two up front and that left us a bit short at the back. It was always going to leave us exposed but we had to go and chase the game.
So, the sending off certainly had a massive impact on the game and its result.
It was very disappointing that Ballymena scored just after half time. Anyone who knows anything about football will know that, at half time, keeping things tight for the first 10 or 15 minutes would be mentioned. Our players were asked to do specific jobs and it was very disappointing that two minutes into the half we were on level terms.
It put us under a lot of pressure and I know that the players themselves were gutted to concede so early on.
The players gave 100% and they were playing with 10 men for an hour against a team who were battling for their lives. Ballymena had got the big ‘pick-me-up’ with us losing a player so early on and it’s hard to play against.
If we had lost 3-1 with 11 men, then it would have been a very bad result and we would have been gutted but we were handicapped so it’s hard to get a true reflection on it.
I think Roy Walker was generous enough in his post-match press conference to say that it would have been hard to call had it been 11 versus 11 throughout the game.
We have to learn from it and be positive. I think we have shown enough for the last month to say that we can still kick-on and get better in the second half of the season.
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Weather for Lurgan
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 5 C to 9 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North west
