Portadown manager Niall Currie admits “you don’t come back from those things against the big boys” after watching Joel Cooper net a 26-minute hat-trick during their 3-1 defeat to Premiership league leaders Linfield.

The Ports have enjoyed a superb return to life in the top-flight and entered Saturday’s contest sitting fourth while only the Blues and Dungannon Swifts had collected more points on home turf this term, but a first half treble from classy Cooper ensured the match was essentially over inside half an hour at Shamrock Park.

Currie’s side played a hand in their own downfall as Cooper clinically took advantage of opportunities presented to him, bringing his Premiership goal tally to 15 for the season, moving alongside both Joe Gormley and Matthew Shevlin in the Golden Boot race.

He’d struck twice within the first six minutes as the Blues came roaring out of the traps, extending their advantage at the summit to 15 points, and Currie insists it’s an almost impossible task to recover from such a deficit.

placeholder image — Portadown manager Niall Currie in conversation with his staff heading into half-time. (Photo by David Maginnis/Pacemaker Press)

"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,” said Currie. "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.”

Portadown have kept nine clean sheets this term – only Linfield (12) and Dungannon (10) can boast a better return – and Currie’s half-time message helped produce defensive improvements after the break.

"I don’t think I was too harsh on them (at half-time),” he added. "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.”