Niall Currie frustrated by Carrick performance

Currie was not happy with his side’s performance in the seven-goal thriller against the Lurgan Blues, and his mood was not tempered by the loss of key attacking personnel to injury.

Despite the first half injuries to strikers Cathair Friel and Alex Gawne the Carrick boss felt his side should have posed more of an attacking threat against ten-man Glenavon, particularly after they pulled the score back to 4-3 with 20 minutes to go.

“It was a poor performance in my opinion,” said Currie.

“The goals were avoidable. We had a terrible start to the game, we didn’t defend a free kick and Colin Coates left unmarked to score.

“There’s only so much you can do as a manager, you designate people to do jobs, and he has a free one there.

“The second goal we have the opportunity to boot the ball up the pitch and clear our lines, not done again.

“But we got a lifeline with ‘Lloydy’ and we started the second half off okay.

“We got our penalty to get back into the game, but then we committed Hari-kari again with their third and fourth goals.

“We have to defend those situations much better. It was individual errors for all the goals today, but it’s not that which really annoys me about today’s performance, it’s more that our performance lacked the levels which we have been at.

“I thought we took the simple way out today, we didn’t risk anything.

“Instead of driving forward and moving the ball into wide areas it was sideways and backwards a bit too much for my liking.

“We’ve been playing with freedom and some attacking stuff lately, but I thought Glenavon deserved their win.

“It was a hard day to play but we had opportunities to get the ball into wide areas, and Lee Chapman is one of the quickest players you’ll see, but we struggled to get him into the game.

“Everything went centrally and Glenavon ended up defending without any real issues.

“We had five or six up top near the end, but we needed to be more clever and drop into pockets and pull defenders out to create space in behind.

“We didn’t do that, we ended up with five guys across the line.

“They were aggressive and defended the first and second balls really well.

“When you’ve got an extra man you have to stretch the pitch, but unfortunately we let Glenavon defend between the two eighteen yard lines.

“They were more wily than us and their decision making was better than us or most of the day.

“We were a tad naive and lacking courage. I don’t mean that as a criticism to the players about bravery in tackles, I mean lacking courage in regards to taking chances in the last third of the pitch.”

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