Portadown manager Niall Currie feels his side are “giving ourselves a big mountain to climb” after conceding an early goal for the second consecutive weekend during their 3-2 defeat against Crusaders.

After Linfield’s Joel Cooper completed a 26-minute hat-trick – which included scoring twice within six minutes – to help set the platform for David Healy’s league leaders to leave Shamrock Park with three points, the Ports fell behind early once again on Saturday when Crues attacker Harry Franklin struck in the second minute.

According to SoccerStats, no Premiership team has conceded more goals than Portadown (eight) in the opening 10 minutes of matches this season while they are one of five sides with a negative goal difference in the first half, conceding 15 and scoring 10.

In stark contrast, they are one of the strongest performers after the break – only Coleraine (25) and Linfield (23) have netted more second half goals than the Ports (22, 13 of which have came in the final 15 minutes) and they’ve conceded the fourth-lowest amount (14).

placeholder image — Portadown manager Niall Currie. (Photo by Inpho/Stephen Hamilton)

Having enjoyed a solid return to life in the Premiership which has included nine clean sheets, Currie wants to put an end to sloppy starts.

"It's really poor from us again,” he told the club’s media channel. “We're giving ourselves a big mountain to climb with it being last week and this weekend too.

"I thought our reaction from the first goal and our character was super. We should have been coming in at half-time a couple up.

"We did well to get back into the game but we had two or three wonderful chances which we rue now.

“The big disappointment for me is the goals we give away in the second half - they are individual errors but that's football.

"They are really poor goals...we lose our man from the corner in an area we should be defending and it's too soft.

"They didn't have to work hard enough. The third goal is nail in the coffin stuff...the ball should have been sitting somewhere on the Shore Road."

While most Premiership clubs are in Irish Cup action this coming weekend, Portadown will still be focused on league duties when they travel to defending champions Larne with both teams eliminated in the fifth round by Championship opposition.

"That's three goals last week and three goals this week since a clean sheet against Loughgall,” added Currie. “All foundations are built with clean sheets so we have to get back to basics and make sure we're more difficult to score against than we are at the minute.

"We'll do our homework (on Larne) and get back to basics. We have to stop poor goals going in and if we can, which we're more than capable of doing, then that's a good grounding because I know we can create chances against any team in the league."