We need points not plaudits, says Stute boss after Reds loss

NEW Institute manager Sean Connor says he’s not interested in “moral victories” after emerging from Saturday’s clash with Cliftonville with nothing but pats on the back to show for their efforts.

His men frustrated the Reds for long spells either side of Ruaidhri Donnelly’s 41st minute goal and visibly grew in confidence after goalkeeper Paul Wells kept Ryan Curran’s penalty out.

Dean Curry and Niall Grace both had late chances to snatch an unlikely point for Stute, whose performance offered signs of encouragement for the new man at the helm.

“I thought we did very well against a good Cliftonville team and there are positives we can take from that,” he said.

“The way we played, the things the players did and the chances we had made it a moral victory for us but I’m not interested in moral victories — you don’t get any points for them.”

On the difficulty of taking over seven weeks into the campaign, he added: “I’m an experienced manager and have been in this sort of position before, so I know what I have to do to make it work.

“Ideally, you’d rather be in from the start and have extra time with the players on the training pitch but I saw us do things against Cliftonville that we had worked on in the week before the game, so hopefully we can keep adding to that and build from here.”

CLIFTONVILLE: Brush, McDermott, Ives (A Donnelly, 8 mins), Breen, Harney, C Curran, R Curran (Bagnall, 63 mins), R Donnelly (Gorman, 89 mins), Doherty, Gormley, McMenamin. Unused subs: Dunne, Garrett, Foster, Maguire.

INSTITUTE: Wells, D Curry, Dunne (McLaughlin, 71 mins), Grace, Tourish, McCready, McCauley, Crowne, McNamee (G Brown, 63 mins), Burke, McGurk (McIntyre, 63 mins). Unused subs: R Brown, J Morrow.

Referee: Tim Marshall (Irvinestown) 8. Man of the match: Paul Wells

Match rating: 5/10