Rodney McAree slams Dungannon Swifts' Irish Cup exit as 'unacceptable' and calls for players to take full responsibility

The Swifts, fresh off beating Premiership leaders Linfield at Windsor Park last weekend, led on two different occasions after goals from Cahal McGinty and Thomas Maguire, but three second-half Ballyclare strikes, including Darius Roohi’s late winner, ensured it would be Stephen Small’s side that set up a quarter-final showdown against Glentoran.

After labelling last month’s 5-2 Mid-Ulster Cup final thrashing at the hands of Portadown as “one of the most embarrassing nights that I've had in football as a player or as a coach”, McAree was left hugely frustrated once again.

"Extremely disappointed,” he reflected to the club’s media channel. “It's the same group of players that went to Windsor Park last weekend and put in a performance like they did.

"They showed hunger, fight, desire and all the boxes you needed to tick to get a result last week, but today they haven't ticked any of those boxes...we were slow, lethargic, didn't look as if we were up for the battle, we looked mentally weak and conceded three goals at home.

"Fair play to Ballyclare...they came with a game plan which frustrated us in the first-half and they came out and had a go in the second-half. Ultimately we've crumbled and it's massively disappointing.

"Sometimes when you get towards the end of your career you look back and think about the big games and occasions you've played in, and today we let an opportunity of getting to an Irish Cup quarter-final pass us by. If it doesn't hurt the players then there's something badly wrong."

The only personnel change between last weekend’s high and Saturday’s low was goalscorer Maguire replacing John Scott from the start, leaving McAree to hypothesise that mindset was a key issue.

"It was probably mindset,” he added. “Some people maybe playing in areas of the pitch they don't believe they should be playing in, maybe with huffy heads on them. It's unacceptable.

"Sometimes I'll stand here and I'll take responsibility, look at what I did and see if I got it wrong. We made one change from last weekend and that was extremely hard on John Scott because he did very well last week.

"The staff haven't got it wrong today - the players have got it massively wrong and they have to take responsibility for the result."