Stuart King dedicates Carrick Rangers victory to club legend David Hilditch following death of former East Antrim MLA aged 60

Hilditch served as MLA for East Antrim from 1998 up until September 2023 and also fulfilled many roles over the years at Carrick Rangers, including chairman, secretary and treasurer.

A celebration of his life was held at Carrickfergus Town Hall on Friday before he was laid to rest at Victoria Cemetery.

The team he supported all his life recorded a second consecutive league win at Stangmore Park the following day with Curtis Allen’s penalty and Nedas Maciulaitis’ brace helping King’s men complete a comeback after they’d fallen behind to Dean Curry’s first-half opener.

Caolan Marron’s header made it a nervy last 10 minutes for the visiting support, but Carrick held on and Kin g said the triumph was for the Hilditch family.

"That's for Davy Hilditch and his family,” he told the club’s media channel. “He was a real important membe r of the football club and I hope his family get a bit of joy out of that.

"It was a massive result for us.

"I thought we were poor in the first-half and a few things were said at half-time.

"They reacted positively and I thought we came out and bossed it.

"That's a huge result - we've backed up two away wins in the league and that's important."

Maciulaitis started on the bench for only the second time this season but produced a wonderful response after being called upon in the 39th minute following an injury to captain David Cushley.

The 24-year-old scored Carrick’s second and third goals – his first was an exquisite volley – and King said the forward deserves credit for his contribution .

"When we got a penalty I didn't even look at it because we missed four on Tuesday night!” he added. “Curtis has put it away to be fair.

"Neds deserves massive credit.

"He was disappointed not to play and that was my call.

"He has came on and gave me a really positive reaction.

"His attitude is amazing, he really wants to do well and he deserves massive credit.

"That's what I want from my players - I want to drive standards through the roof and want my four centre forwards to push each other as much as they can.

"If I have people reacting like the way Neds did today then we're doing something right and he deserves a massive amount of credit."

Both of Dungannon’s goals came via headers from free-kicks and King admits that’s an area that his men need to work on.

"We've talked at length about balls in our box and not dealing with them properly,” he said. “I'm going to evaluate that loads this week and we're going to go and work on it because there have been another two headers in the box and we've conceded two goals.

"Thankfully our guys at the other end are scoring three every game at the moment.

"We have to defend better as a collective but we're creating chances, so there has to be a happy medium.”