​Carrick Rangers' in-house answers search to solve early-season form swings

Success over Glenavon kicked off the campaign with two goals, three points and one clean sheet for a perfect start by Stuart King’s men – in stark contrast to the 3-0 loss last weekend in Loughgall.

Now Carrick play host to Glentoran tonight in search of a return to winning ways and Irvine is keen on in-house answers towards outside solutions.

"It's probably the most frustrating thing for us...it's so hard to put your finger on why it happened,” said Irvine in response to the defeat by Loughgall. "You could nearly sense it on the Thursday night, just the intensity of training in comparison to the week previous and even the Tuesday.

"Part of us felt like we could see it coming (but) you're thinking you've too much experience in the changing room to allow that to happen.

"But once Loughgall went in front we stopped playing and doing the things which had brought us success, so we got what we deserved.

"But it's so hard to pinpoint a reason why...from our point-of-view we'll try to be more aware of those signals.

"If we can see that lack of intensity of training then we'll have to step in and nip it in the bud as quickly as possible.

"It's been made clear to everyone it's not acceptable.

"We've always wanted our senior players to step up...even going back to the massive role people like David Cushley and Jim Ervin had when we first came in.

"It's getting people to stay calm and trust what we're about and worked hard on in pre-season.

"It's football, everyone has a bad day and we'll take it as that.

"It's just about our senior players demanding high standards and those high standards being delivered more than not.

"Those lads will be massive throughout our changing room over the season.

"We'll demand that from them...we allow them to manage their changing room.

"I keep harping back to standards, you've Seanan Clucas, Paul Heatley and Luke McCullough..all winners, all demand really high standards.

"We now have 11, 12, 13 players all of the same calibre...it's good and we expect that to be taken care of within the changing room and, if it's not, we'll have to step in and address things.

"But it's brilliant that we have that amount of experience at the club.

"They're professional lads, really experienced and they'll go about their business and obviously want to get a result off the back of Saturday."

The lack of a midweek fixture forced Carrick into a waiting game for the chance to get back on track.

"From Friday's point of view it was probably good we didn't play (on Tuesday) but to get over Saturday we would prefer to have a game and get that out of the road,” said Irvine. "There have been a lot of changes at Glentoran but there’s still plenty of character and a loads of quality.

"We've always just asked to progress, season on season, so far we've done that and been able to chip away at little records.

"We just want to keep on improving and if we do that then we'll not be far away from the things the club would love.”