THE DONN

Rory wants the Reds hitmen to be more ruthless

CLIFTONVILLE striker Rory Donnelly couldn’t resist using the C word following Saturday’s 3-1 win over title chasing Crusaders.

That’s C for consistency, something that’s been hard to find at Solitude this season, much to the frustration of fans, players and straight talking boss Barry Gray.

This derby demolition was only the North Belfast club’s third win in their last 11 Danske Bank Premiership outings dating back to December 23.

Prior to that, they had taken a prolific 33 points from 36 over 12 games between September and the festive period.

The contrast has been stark. Donnelly said: “Recently, we haven’t been consistent and it annoys you – win one game, lose one game, draw one game. As a team we’ve had a few meetings and talked about it.

“The belief is always there, but we have to show it on a consistent basis. You can see from our performance against Crusaders that we corrected a number of things and everything went our way.

“It gets your confidence up, but it’s all about backing up that level of performance. It’s easy getting up for derby games and also Linfield in the Irish Cup on Tuesday night, but we have to kick on now.”

Joe Gormley, right, swept the Reds into a sixth minute lead before Donnelly doubled the advantage a minute later with a close range finish after latching onto a Gormley pass.

It was 3-0 on 16 minutes when Gormley converted from the penalty spot after Crues keeper Brian Jensen stupidly kicked out at Jamie Harney inside the area.

The Crues, whose lead over Coleraine at the top has been cut to two points with seven games to play, bagged a late consolation through Jordan Owens.

Donnelly was pleased to bag a derby goal – his 10th of the season – after shipping some criticism for showing a lack of goal threat since making his high profile return to Cliftonville in the summer. The former Swansea striker said: “It’s a lift and nice to score again, but overall I think my recent performances have been getting better.

“If I’m not scoring I feel like I’m helping the team and that’s important. To get off the mark early against Crusaders was good.

“I came back from five or six days a week training (in England) to two or three max here and it was hard at the start of the season, but the more games I’ve played, the fitter I’ve got.”

Reflecting on a first league loss since October, Crusaders boss Stephen Baxter said: “When you concede three goals in 10 minutes, you give yourself a mountain to climb.

“We got a goal back and hit the woodwork a couple of times, but it wasn’t to be. We’ll dust ourselves down and prepare for Dungannon on Saturday.”