I’m pleased with a point and, over the ninety minutes, I feel that it was a fair result.
Coleraine obviously had a great chance that they missed and hit the crossbar. When the ball fell to Jody Tolan I thought ‘Oh here we go again, just our luck’
and almost turned away.
I thought he was just going to tap it in but that was a wee turn of luck for us that it went our way. As I’ve said before, we have to go out and earn our luck and work for it.
In saying that, we had some chances ourselves and I think we had two valid claims for a penalty turned down. Especially when Davy O’Hare came sliding into the back of Tony Grant’s legs. The referee gave a free-kick the other way which I can’t, for the life of me, understand.
So, overall it was a hard fought point and I think it was the right result.
I think that everybody can see that the side are starting to believe in themselves. There’s a bit of bottle and fight in there and we have the fitness to compete over ninety minutes.
Tuda made two excellent saves and one in particular that if it had been in the English Premiership, would have been shown on Match of the Day and Sky Sports News over and over again. It was world-class.
At the end of the day, goalkeepers are there to save shots and that was his moment. It’s like a striker scoring an equaliser. He had a super game all round and we’ll give him credit for that.
We got no protection from the officials. Ryan Harpur has walked off with several stitches in his eye-lid and his legs are scored with stud-marks.
When the linesman drew the referee’s attention to the elbow, I thought he was going to give him a red card but he gave him a yellow. That becomes even more incredible when you see Trevor Molloy getting a straight red.
The way I saw it, and from talking to Trevor after the game, the ball was played to his feet, he got a touch and to save it from running out for a throw-in, he tried to hook it up the line to keep it in play.
As he played the ball, the player more or less tripped over his feet and fell awkwardly on to the track. When you’re in possession of the ball, trying to keep it in play and the player’s tackling you, how do you get a straight red for that?
When he pulled out a straight red, it was unbelievable.
On the two penalty claims that we didn’t get, OK the keeper just came in and clashed with Tony Grant in one of them but in the other, I felt that he took his legs from under him right on the by-line.
But, that’s five games unbeaten for us now and when you look back at those games, it comes down to everybody playing their part. When we get everybody competing, working hard and playing football we will get results.
We’ll just have to keep going like that and steadily progress up the league table.
The players now have a bit of belief and I think it’s no coincidence that on Saturday, we started with the same 11 for the third game in a row.
The full article contains 596 words and appears in Lurgan Mail newspaper.