Glenmuir forced into promotion play-off

IT was no April Fool’s Day joke for Glenmuir as their North East League campaign ended in ant-climax on Saturday. They suffered their first defeat since Christmas after seven straight wins to lose out on automatic promotion as their opponents secured the second and last spot.

However, in an encouraging first season back in the league, Glenmuir who finished third still have the chance to gain promotion to the third division through the play-offs.

Regardless of how they fare Glenmuir can feel satisfied with their performance as the only team who beat the winners Skryne Tara home and away, and also defeated runners-up Summerhill.

In the light of that the visitors perhaps had more of an incentive to win to gain revenge for that defeat as well as clinch promotion. The sides were locked together on 42 points at kick-off and victory would have put Glenmuir three points ahead, but Summerhill could have still caught them with another match to play.

They had the points as good as in the bag after 20 minutes, opening up a three nil lead only for Glenmuir to fightback to reduce the deficit with Brendan Sheils poking the ball home following a goalmouth scramble, and again after Summerhill notched a fourth goal. Again Sheils was the scorer as he took a pass from Eamon Kenny and cut inside from the right to shoot to the net. That left the scorline 4-2 at the break.

The home side battled hard in the second-half and the final margin that separated the sides didn’t reflect the overall play.

Glenmuir dominated the opening 25 minutes but couldn’t gain a break, striking the woodwork twice, denied by the crossbar and post, had a goal disallowed and had a couple of claims for a penalty, as well as being guilty of some loose finishing.

Somewhat dispirited and forced to push players forward, gaps appeared.

Looking back it was points dropped in the early games of the season that left Glenmuir with a lot of ground to make up on the top teams.

But they weren’t helped by the fact that with their own pitch undergoing major work they had to play a string of games away from home. GLENMUIR: Jamie Faulkner, Edgar Bitanis, Andrew Hayes, Shane Finnegan, David McComish, Peter McDermott, Niall Hand, Brendan Sheils, Eamon Kenny, David Hughes, Ronan Hand, Lorcan Doyle, Conor Nicholson, Kevin Mulgrew.