Portadown boss Niall Currie has promised one last push in a bid to take his players from pre-season relegation candidates to European contenders.

Having been promoted as Championship champions, the Ports kicked off the top-flight return tipped by many as facing a battle to beat the drop.

However, a campaign Currie called “wonderful” has left Portadown hoping for one more against-the-odds weekend to close out the Premiership season in contention for European football.

Saturday’s 2-0 triumph over Cliftonville helped the Ports cut the gap on the visitors to Shamrock Park to just two points with one game left in the race to secure seventh spot and a shot at qualification for Europe via the play-off system.

placeholder image — Portadown manager Niall Currie. (Photo by David Maginnis/Pacemaker Press)

Now getting ready to host Ballymena United and hope near-neighbours Loughgall can defeat Cliftonville, Currie feels a season of “many ups and downs” can deliver one more high point.

"It's a great achievement (to secure eighth)...it's been wonderful,” said Currie after watching Josh Ukek create an early goal for Eamon Fyfe before firing home a spectacular second-half strike. "I think the whole club's target was 10th!

"It's been a long season, we've had many ups and downs but I can't praise the players enough.

"We're going into games the last six or seven weeks with five or six starters not in the team.

"For a newly-promoted club with 90 minutes together just on Tuesdays and Thursdays...the players are a credit to the club.

"We can go into the 95th minute, no-one can accuse this group of fading away...we've won many, many games in added time.

"I thought we thoroughly deserved it (win over Cliftonville), everybody should be proud.

"We carried a real threat...I felt after five or 10 minutes we were on it, I liked the balance and shape, today belongs to the collective.

"Cliftonville are a top-end side and shouldn't be in the bottom six but I don't think we got them on a bad day, they got us on one of our really, really good days."

Portadown’s hope for European reward is one Currie feels his players "deserve”.

"I asked the players to take it right to the end,” said Currie. "Any times we've been down we've been able to bounce back and it shows character...all season they've had that resilience.

"We've some wonderful memories this season...I think we deserve to take it to the last game to get into the European play-off.

"It's brilliant and we'll give it a right go...if next week we get near that level of performance today then we've a huge chance.

"It's out of our hands but the other side of the coin is Loughgall are fighting away...all we can do is make sure we finish our end of it.

"The players have represented the club brilliantly...all supporters want is honesty and they have that with this group.

"I felt there were some phases of play today absolutely fantastic, which you never really hear about us, we're (seen) as just hard-working, dogged...we're better than just an honest team.”