Hours before Irish League football prepared to recognise the game’s finest on Saturday, Portadown assistant manager Clifford Adams declared achievements of his own boss as “overlooked”.

Adams was alongside Ports boss Niall Currie during home success by 3-1 over Loughgall with a derby outcome that confirmed the visitors’ relegation.

As he took time out of swapping his tracksuit for black tie before heading to the Northern Ireland Football League ceremony, Adams made the point of praising the progress at Shamrock Park under Currie.

Following promotion as Championship champions, the Ports were tipped to face a relegation battle but sit five points behind Cliftonville in the battle for seventh spot and potential European football entering the closing two Premiership fixtures.

placeholder image — Portadown assistant manager Clifford Adams (right). (Photo by David Maginnis/Pacemaker Press)

"I think at times Niall doesn't get the credit he deserves,” said Adams. "For what he's done - what we've all done - he seems to just get overlooked at times.

"Everybody around the club has done a fantastic job this season, it is tough, there's so much work to get done when moving between a Championship team to a Premiership team.

"There's 100 per cent that motivation to try and get seventh, otherwise what's the point in all of the work done beforehand?

"We play Cliftonville here and we'll try our best to take it into the last game.

"It's an uphill task, no-one's stupid with two games to go but we want something to play for in the final week.

"Everybody's disappointed with what's happened over the last month-and-a-half.

"We still have motivation, we don't want to drop down the table, we want to finish as high as we can.

"We're very thankful we've a Board here that works its socks off to try and get us the best players we can.

"They could've been happy to accept we're safe now but they wanted to fight all the way.

"Something that's been damaged for long isn't going to be rebuilt overnight and something that's built fast rarely lasts...for us it's slow and steady but we just want to keep building every year."

Derby delight arrived at home to Loughgall by 3-1 on Saturday thanks to goals from James Teelan, Josh Ukek and Ben Wylie – the latter also sent off – with Ryan Waide the visitors’ scorer.

"Our cry at half-time was we believe we're in control but thought we were in third gear,” said Adams. "We need to get more shots off, we need to create more chances and take more men on...which is something we haven't been doing as much as in the first half of the season.

"We're very disappointed with the goal we conceded so soon after scoring.

"People rarely mention when it comes to Portadown the injuries we have...we'd three-quarters of the team not playing today.

"Dougie Wilson, Ryan Mayse, Gary Thompson, Lewis MacKinnon, Baris Altintop, Luke Wilson...we're missing six or seven and out of that list maybe five starters every week.

"It's hard to keep the level going and that's probably been killing us the past few weeks.

"You can't have so many players out of a team and expect them to be consistent.

"I think our players have had a top-drawer season compared to where everybody at the start thought."