YOUNG SEEING A TEAM REBORN

Competitive belief is back at Kilmore

JOHN YOUNG believes his work at Kilmore Rec is slowly but surely beginning to bear fruit.

The Crossgar outfit earned an eighth win of the season on Saturday at in-form Rosario – eclipsing the seven they won across the entire campaign last year – to move level on points with fourth-placed Orangefield.

In fact, you have to go back to the 2014/15 season when Kilmore were still a Premier Division outfit for the last time they picked up as many league wins.

Off the pitch too, numbers in training – always a good measure of the health of a club in the Amateur League – are hugely encouraging, with approximately 50 players across three teams turning out.

And to add to the feelgood factor, Young has also managed to lure back a handful of former players, the likes of Matty Hardy, Joe Mckinney, Michael Moonan, Anton Mcgrattan and Chris Magee, giving him plenty of competition for places, notwithstanding his younger brother Conall’s deadline day switch to Warrenpoint Town.

It’s all a far cry from when Young took the reins late in the summer of 2017.

His remit back then was a modest one, to just steady the ship after a succession of managers – Donal Bell, Neil Obank, Graham Mcconnell and his predecessor John Murray – had all struggled to arrest the club’s downward slide.

These days, however, Kilmore are competitive once more, and would even be joint second with Larne Tech had they not been docked the points for their 3-0 win over Newcastle after unwittingly fielding an ineligible player.

“I think we’ve been very unlucky this season,” said Young.

“We got docked three points at the start of the season for playing a suspended player. It was a genuine error, but only for that we’d be sitting on 28 points and second in the table, but obviously with more games played than other teams.

“But it’s a massive improvement on last year and previous years and we’re rebuilding because we have managed to get a lot of young Crossgar boys back and so they’re back involved and fighting for places.

“So it’s been good, and like I say, we’ve been unlucky. Out of our seven defeats, two or three of the games we deserved to win or at least get a point.

“Comber deserved to beat us twice, Orangefield deserved to beat us, Newcastle away deserved to beat us, and Killyleagh at home definitely, but Larne Tech at home, we should have won the game, we had a lot of chances, and Killyleagh away, we should have won also, so it could have a different outlook on it.

“We’ve set ourselves up to win 10 or 12 [league] games this season instead of the twos or threes like previous seasons.

“So we want to keep the squad intact and make a big challenge for next year. We want to push on, we want to kick on and maybe get 18 or 19 wins next year.”

Summer capture James Mcgivern grabbed the only goal of the game for the visitors at the newly-opened Ulidia on Saturday to complete a league double over the Roses, making it three away wins in the league on the bounce.

“It was a good solid performance from us,” said Young.

“We gave away a couple of early chances which Rosario should have scored from, but after that, there was only one team in it and that was us, we could have won five or six, we were very dominant.”

With Kilmore all but safe from relegation and out of the promotion reckoning, Young says the league campaign is all about maintaining momentum.

But there is still the cup to aim for, with Bangor Young Men due at Robert Adams Park in the third round of the Clarence this weekend.

“We want to go as far as we can, I’m not saying we’re going to win it but we want to give it a go,” said Young.

“We have a squad there who can hurt teams and the cup keeps the players interested.”