Paul Doolin frustration over Portadown fitness and ‘group of strangers’ display

A first senior Shamrock Park appearance of the league season arrived 15 weeks on from securing Premiership status with a play-off victory over Annagh United at the same venue.

Having joined in January, the summer months between those games offered Doolin a chance to rebuild in his first pre-season as Ports boss and no fewer than nine fresh faces clocked up minutes against Coleraine.

However, Doolin felt the nature of a close-season schedule with such focus on transfers made inevitable some of those weekend frustrations as Coleraine took the lead on 20 minutes then cemented success early in the second half thanks to Matthew Shevlin’s brace of goals.

It left Portadown having shipped six goals from demanding opening tests against defending champions Linfield and Coleraine over the initial fortnight of Doolin’s first full Irish League campaign.

“We spent our pre-season looking for players and looking at players,” said Doolin, who must now prepare for a trip to Crusaders tomorrow before hosting Glentoran this Friday. “In the second half, players’ heads went down and we looked like a group of strangers and not really a team.

“We didn’t stay up (last season) because we scored lots of goals since I’ve come in...we stopped conceding.

“If you concede goals you have a problem and we did it in pre-season.

“It’s a very difficult thing to change but we have to start.

“When trying to get players, we signed players in attacking areas of the pitch.

“I said to the players - ‘are you telling me we’re not going to go a goal down between now and the end of the season?’

“We’ve got to do better...the latter part of the first half was very good but in the second half it was not good enough.

“We are trying to integrate players but also they’re probably not fit enough.

“Some came in at the start, some in the middle and some at the end of pre-season.

“It’s a problem and that’s being honest.

“Coleraine had a side with players from around the Irish League.

“Before you know where you are you could be 15 games gone - we could end up in a battle like last season.

“For us, three games in seven days is a lot - I was happy when the Glentoran game was changed from Friday to Saturday as it would give us that extra recovery time against a full-time team...but now it has been put back.”

“The first 20 minutes, Coleraine had the better of the game, we couldn’t really get to grips with them in the middle.

“They scored a really good goal and finished it well but the latter part of the first half we got going and played really well and were unlucky maybe.

“But in the second half they scored from our kick-off...it’s the wrong pass then there’s no-one picking him up.”