After an afternoon standing in the wind and rain on his return to the Irish League manager’s dug-out, Oran Kearney swapped looking forward to the ski slopes of Italy on Saturday night for looking back over defeat to Portadown – but still declared “I’ve enjoyed it”.

James Teelan’s second-half strike took the shine off Kearney back as boss but the man in the spotlight stood determined to use the 1-0 reverse towards moving Ballymena forward.

"Good parts of bits that we've worked on through the week, little bits and pieces that we're starting to show,” said Kearney. "But the hard part is we're mid-season and there's not six weeks to spread a message and six weeks to do things the way I want to do them.

"And it's very much one where you're trying to make those little changes, but you've got to make them incrementally.

placeholder image — Oran Kearney applauds the away support in Portadown during his first match as Ballymena United boss. (Photo by David Maginnis/Pacemaker Press)

"Because you're just slap in the middle of the season and you can't just go and turn it into exactly what you want it to look like straight away.

"It's been an enjoyable week...a week where you understand a huge amount of stuff.

"The grasp of the whole scenario, the whole squad, the whole everything.

"There's all these new faces, new names, people with jobs who do this, that and everything else...it has been relentless.

"But the most important thing...I've enjoyed it.

"I enjoyed training through the week, getting out on the pitch again.

"And I thought I'd actually be restless (on Friday night) but I wasn't.

"I just know we have a lot of work to do and that's the key thing.”

Part of that commitment to weekend work involved Kearney having to cancel a planned school ski trip for his day job as PE teacher with Ballycastle’s Cross and Passion College.

"I'm meant to be going skiing tonight to Italy with the school,” said Kearney at Shamrock Park in his post-match press chat. "I've never been skiing with the school and because I was on a break from football it was the opportunity to go and do that.

"So they're all heading away this evening there with the school and you're trying to get another teacher, trying to book flights, all that sort of stuff.

"The whole thing has just been information overload nearly for a long period of time but, listen, it will settle.”

And, when asked for initial reflections from the Portadown loss, Kearney was clear.

"There were some positives today...I thought defensively we were really sound,” he said. "I thought we'd been very compact, very smart and very good in that way.

"I just thought we could have maybe looked after the ball a bit better, passed the ball a bit more.

"And at the top end, we've had three or four really good goes in the first half...where maybe a wee bit of quality or a wee bit of decision-making has let us down.

"And the final thing I can say is when we went behind we got a really good response.

"We've had a real good go there towards the end so, attitude-wise, I can't fault the players this week...but this is the Premiership so we need more than that.”