Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MCCANN’S YOUR MAN
Ciaran’s goal keeps double dream alive
BALLYORAN still dream of a league and cup double but no matter what happens, they’ll look back on this as a “dream season”.
The Portadown men clinched the Alexandra Cup on Friday night with a hard-fought victory over Armagh Rovers. The next target for Damien Mccourt’s side is to finish top of Division One, of which they’re currently six points clear. They looked to have dealt a devastating blow to Hill Street earlier this month with a 4-2 home win over them. But four days later it was back in the mix when ‘Oran lost away at Sandy Hill to put it back in Street’s hands with their two games in hand. Ballyoran wrap up their league campaign this weekend with a potentially tricky trip across town to Rectory Rangers. Currently sixth, the Gers can still finish as high as third in the table with a late run of wins. So there’s no prospect of a gimme for Mccourt’s men. Which is why the player-boss has urged his players to rediscover their best form for one final fling. He said: “We’ve beaten Hill Street twice this season and we’ve beaten Coalisland twice. “They are the two best teams we’ve faced this season so we’ve proven what we’re capable of. “Hill Street have a lot of football still to play so it’s still all to play for. “All we can do is our own job and that means beating Rectory on Saturday. “It’s going to be very difficult because they can finish third and they’re going after Intermediate football. “It’s also a derby game so it will be intense. We’ve played them twice already and they were hard games so this will be the same. “After beating Hill Street we maybe got ahead of ourselves because we couldn’t get going against Sandy Hill. “But we still have a chance of winning the double so we have to do our own job and hope it’s enough.” He added: “No matter what happens, this has been a fantastic season for Ballyoran. “We sat down at the start of the