'Character in abundance' behind Irish League's promoted Bangor enjoying first-half season strides
Bangor manager Lee Feeney believes his players fully merit their mid-table position going into the hectic festive schedule.
The newly-promoted Seasiders have held their own on a return to the Premiership after a 16-year absence – as demonstrated in Saturday’s gutsy 1-1 draw with in-form Cliftonville.
Although Ryan Curran shot Jim Magilton’s team into a first-half lead from the penalty spot – his 100th goal for the club – battling Bangor soon hit back, courtesy of Ben Arthurs’ 10 finish of the season.
Having pocketed an impressive 25 points from their opening 20 games, Feeney’s boys can look forward to the rest of the campaign with a great deal of optimism.
“We are proper competitive in this league, there is no question about that,” said Feeney, who was taking charge of his team for the 200th time. “After 20 games, I don’t think anyone would ever question that. We have character in abundance.
“The one thing about our team is they don’t flinch when they concede. Other teams may drop heads, but it doesn’t bother us.
“That was a big point against a good Cliftonville side for a lot of reasons – it proved we can defend properly.
“We’ve been victims of teams scoring last-minute goals against us, so it shows he have learned from that.
“We are competing consistently...we are sitting seventh (in the table) going into the Christmas period, I’d have taken that if someone had offered at the start of the season.”
Feeney wasn’t convinced Cliftonville’s penalty kick was justified when Conor Pepper went down under a challenge from Harry Lynch.
The Bangor boss added: “Cliftonville are such a good side and the move the ball well.
"But I always believed we could get a winner and we nearly did in the last minute.”
Cliftonville boss Magilton insisted it was one hard-earned point.
“It’s always a very difficult place to visit because of the quality of opposition,” said the former Northern Ireland international. “Lee Feeney deserves immense credit for what he has done at Bangor; his players also deserve immense credit.
“But I thought we were in control of the game.
"Jonny (Addis) doesn’t make many mistakes, but he slipped for their goal and, to be fair to Arthurs, he put the chance away well.
“We didn’t show enough in the attacking third in the second half. We needed to increase the tempo and we became a little bit sloppy.
“We needed to be more threatening in the box, and we didn’t have that. We are still learning.
"We had possession, not what I would call quality possession - and had a few opportunities in the second half - but we didn’t test their goalkeeper enough.”
BANGOR: Solis Grogan, Neale, Haughey, Harrison, Mulvenna, Arthurs, Cushnie, O’Mahony, Lynch, Devlin, S.McGuinness
Subs: McMahon, C.McGuinness, Hassin, Francis, Boyd, Morgan, Burns
CLIFTONVILLE: Morrison, Pepper, Lavery, Addis, Wilson, Curran, Leppard, Glynn, Keaney, McWoods, Sheridan
Subs: Ridd, Falls, Gordon, McCay, Gormley, Fapetu, Tohill
Referee: Tim Marshall