MANAGER'S VERDICT: Niall Currie felt Portadown 'gifted them their goals' as Joel Cooper nets hat-trick for Linfield

Here’s what Ports boss Niall Currie had to say after the match:

THOUGHTS ON THE MATCH

"From our point of view, we have to look at ourselves and we gave a very good side, a top team, an unbelievable start and you don’t come back from those things against the big boys.

"We started really well, broke out a couple of times with (James) Teelan causing plenty of problems, but the goals are poor.

"We have young centre-backs and they are still learning the game as well. They haven’t made too many mistakes this year – they’ve been outstanding.

"We were poor today on the defensive side of it and we gifted them their goals, but what I will say is I thought we were outstanding in the second half.

"Sometimes it’s easier to come out when you think the game is over...we had as many chances as Linfield and we didn’t take any of our four big ones.

"You look at Linfield and the three opportunities they had in the first half, which we contributed to, but they finish it and that’s the difference.

"I asked the players to show character at half-time and they certainly did that in the second half.

"I thought our performance was good in the second half and we caused them a lot of problems, but ultimately the first half is the key to everything and they were ruthless, which is why they are sitting top of the league.”

REACTION AT HALF-TIME – ANGRY OR COMPOSED?

"I don’t think I was too harsh on them.

"Frustration would probably be the word. I think the players know we gifted them a wonderful start...I’ll give them a reminder of what we should be doing but they knew themselves.

"We needed aggression against Matthew Fitzpatrick today and for 45 minutes we didn’t get that. I thought he was well dealt with in the second half but it was too late in the day.

"I’m not going to be critical of our defence – they’ve kept nine clean sheets this season and gave us the platform to win a lot of matches.

"It was a bad day but there were also huge positives going forward. I thought Rabby (Minzamba) was outstanding in the middle of the park and him and Gary (Thompson) were very good.

"We’ve Shay (McCartan) ready to start games again and Teelan has been brilliant. I thought Josh Ukek was a real threat and we had to take Maysey (Ryan Mayse) off because we were warned that one more and he was gone.”

ON PERFORMANCE OF RABBY MINZAMBA

"He was excellent today.

"He’s a proper ball-playing six but he gets about the pitch, breaks play up and we’re very impressed with him.”

ON LEARNING DEFENSIVE LESSONS FROM TODAY

"Our two centre-backs have been brilliant this season and have played against everybody – of course they’ll learn.

"They are still young boys and what we learnt today was that we were really aggressive in the second half and that’s how you deal with dominant centre-forwards – you match them with aggression and suddenly everything changes.

"Matthew Fitzpatrick didn’t cause us any problems in the second half and that’s because Baris (Altintop) was aggressive and did exactly what Matty did to him in the first half.

"We’re always learning. I’m not overly downbeat about that today – I thought our second half performance gave us a lot of positives.

"I’ve been in situations where I’ve been six down after going down two or three early...it was absolutely character building and we have to learn that the first 15 or 20 minutes is where you win or lose football matches.”