With games-in-hand Phil was still hopeful of catching Newington

EAMONN MCCARTHY’S Newington may have been on the cusp of winning the Premier Division title, but Dromara Village boss Phil Mcdonagh wasn’t giving up the ghost just yet.

Back in this edition of Match on Tuesday, the Bellsbridge manager was bullish, claiming the reigning champions were beatable – a confidence no doubt coming from the fact that Dromara had dumped the North Belfast side out of both the Steel & Sons and Border Cup earlier in the season.

“It’s Newington’s to lose now,” admitted Mcdonagh.

“In saying that they still have a lot of difficult games but it’s whether or not the teams they have to play have the belief they can beat Newington.

“I think sometimes teams are beat before they even step onto the pitch against Newington, they think they are not going to win.

“But they still have to play Kilmore who are more than capable of taking points of them and Albert Foundry, who I rate highly as a team.

“Also Ards Rangers, who now maybe have only pride to play for but again they are a quality team and are capable of taking points off Newington. But we can only worry about ourselves. It’s a big, big ask (to win the title) but all we can do is pick up as many points as we can and see where we end up.

“Unfortunately we’ve slipped up in a few matches which has proved costly – if we had have won them, we would have been in a better position.

“But we still have to play Newington twice.

“Those games are going to be crucial but we have to get ourselves in a good position before we get to those fixtures.

“They are obviously a quality side but we have proved we can beat them.”

Dromara had just come off the back of a game on Saturday against Ards Rangers, a deflected Seamus Mcdonald shot and a second from Brendan Mcnamee earning them a 2-1 win.

However, although the win kept Dromara in touching distance of the leaders, any further progress would have to be without the services of their injured talisman Declan O’connor, while his strike partner Aaron Thompson has had to deputise in nets due to an injury to first choice keeper Ross Preece.

“Declan O’connor is out for the remainder of the season, he had an operation on his knee and to lose your top goalscorer at this stage of the season is a big loss for us.

“We lost our goalkeeper Ross Preece to injury in a game against Islandmagee so basically for the last three games we’ve been playing our other centre-forward Aaron Thompson in goal.

“Aaron has been doing a great job in goal but it’s not where we want him and Tony O’hagan and Paul Close also look like they’ll be out for the remainder of the season so that’s four players down.

“But in saying that we have been to Downpatrick with no recognised keeper and also Ards Rangers and got results so full credit to the players, they’ve been digging in and grinding out results.”