Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
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Johnston calls on his Bryansburn to make Ballywooley a fortress for promotion push
JOHN JOHNSTON is banking on Bryansburn’s home form as he looks to guide the club to promotion in his first season in charge.
The Ballywooley outfit suffered a setback to their hopes of climbing out of 1C on Saturday when the champions-in-waiting 18th Newtownabbey completed the league double over the visitors at Cloyne Crescent. The defeat was only a second in the league all season for the Bangor men, however, and they can still reclaim the second spot if they win their game in hand over the team currently occupying the last promotion place Shorts.
Aside from the 18th defeat, Bryansburn have dropped just two further points at home all season when Saintfield held them to a 2-2 draw in September. Ongoing problems with their pitch means they have had to play a disproportionate amount of away games over recent weeks – they have been on their travels for the last six league fixtures in fact – but Johnston hopes that can play into their hands, offering them the prospect of building up momentum at home for the crunch run-in to the season.
“I looked at the league last year and 55 points took you up in second place,” explained Johnston.
“There is a team less this year so I’d be disappointed if we got to 50 points and didn’t get promoted, which gives us another 20 points to get from 10 games.
“But this is probably the best 1C I have seen in quite a few years, there are probably four or five teams there in the mix, you have ourselves, Shorts, Suffolk and Rosemount, I would say that is the four teams battling for second place.
“But we have 10 games left and six of those are at home so we won’t be far away.
“If we win all our home games that means we would need to get two points from our four away games, but we are just going to take it one game at a time.”
Coupled with last week’s draw at Bangor Amateurs, Bryansburn have taken just four points from a possible nine so far this month.
But Johnston insists he has no concerns about their sluggish start to the New Year, and is backing his players to get their promotion charge back on track this weekend.
“We dropped points last week against the Amateurs but we should have hammered them,” said the Bryansburn boss. “And then yesterday we were disappointed with our performance but no one is going to beat them this year and we will bounce back.
“I had a lot of the players contacting me after the game to say they were absolutely gutted, that shows what it means to them so for us it’s all about the response now.”
Indeed, ever since taking the reins of the club over the summer, Johnston admits he’s been relishing the challenge of overturning Bryansburn’s reputation as the nearly men of 1C.
“Talking to anyone they all say the same thing, that Bryansburn are always like a mid-table team, but that’s not what I’m about, I want to win,” he said.
“I’ve brought a guy in from Glentoran, Michael Davis, he’s come in and his training is top class.
“Anything I ask of him is there, and all the boys enjoy his coaching and he’s just brought a bit of professionalism to the setup and I’d rather have my changing room than anyone else’s, every day of the week.
“The attitude of my players is top class, I don’t have any prima donnas, just boys who want to work hard for the club. “There are four or five players who have been with Bryansburn for years, so I was very lucky in the summer to inherit a very decent squad.
“We just needed three or four added to it and that’s what we have done and the hard work has got us where we are.”