WHAT THE MANAGER SAID: Niall Currie's 'blow your gaskets' message behind Portadown win at Crusaders

Here’s the post-match verdict from Portadown manager Niall Currie:

PERFORMANCE...

"I thought we were a wee bit passive in the first half, we were reacting, not pro-active.

"I think the last five minutes of the first half worried me a wee bit, we sat off and they were getting shots in from 25 yards as we weren’t pressing the ball.

"I told them at half-time ‘blow your gaskets’, we can’t be shadowing people, just jogging out.

"Everything has to be done at a sprint and we were much better the second half.

"What pleased me today was our ball retention, our control of the game….we didn’t look out of sorts.

"We can look at our bench and we’re in that situation where we’ve competition for places."

PROGRESS...

“The main thing that we want is to have everybody stay humble, stay together and pulling in the same direction.

“We’ve got a really good team spirit and all through pre-season we talked about resilience.

"The players are in a good place and there’s good confidence around the place at the minute but we just want to stay humble.

"We’re expected to fight it out in a relegation battle - and rightly so whenever you look at the other teams in this league - but we’ve acquitted well.

"We’ve got a good big squad, a squad of game-changers.

"All the plaudits go to the players.

"We'll have adversity this season, absolutely...but what I'm seeing from the players at the minute is honesty.

"And we're not short of a few good players either.

"Long may it continue."