'Soft' second-half performance is why my Dungannon Swifts side deserved nothing at Solitude, says Rodney McAree

After both teams cancelled each other out for 45 minutes, Cliftonville took the lead not long after the restart when Dungannon failed to clear their lines from a corner-kick and Jonny Addis made them pay with a header.

A cheap free-kick conceded at the edge of the box led to the Swifts being breached for the second time on 69 minutes when Jack Keaney struck a low effort into the bottom corner.

When asked to sum-up the start to the second-half, McAree replied: "For about 15-20 minutes, I thought we were soft. We showed a softness and when you look at the two goals that we conceded, we have to defend it better.

"We have to react to second balls better, we have to deal with things. We allow Cliftonville, which they want to do, get the midfielders high and in behind you and we allow Joe Sheridan to get into an area and then we make a stupid foul on the edge of the 18-yard line and we get punished.

"But over the course of 90 minutes, I don't think we deserved anything from the game.

"The first half, I thought we were good, I thought we were decent, I thought it was a decent game.

"But a huge amount of frustration and certain things went against us today as well. You need a bit of luck and decisions to go your own way too today maybe they didn’t."

Dungannon Swifts assistant Dixie Robinson was sent-off after the full-time whistle following a conversation with the match officials.

However, McAree downplayed the incident.

He explained: “Dixie gets sent off for not using any foul language – not using it.

"I was standing beside him, he says it was embarrassing, is what he said. He gets sent off for it. It's frustration from our point of view, from coaches point of view, you're involved in the game. This is our livelihood, it's my livelihood, it's Dixie's livelihood.

"So there's a huge amount of frustration, whether he gets sent off for that or not on this day in age, I'm not sure.”