Terry Devlin hopes Irish Cup win will be catalyst for Glentoran resurgence after poor run

Mick McDermott’s boys got back on a winning theme in Saturday’s Samuel Gelston’s Whiskey Irish Cup win against little Moyola Park at Mill Meadow.

Goals from Devlin and Danny Purkis helped the East Belfast side book a sixth round date away at Portadown on Saturday, February 4.

It wasn’t pretty stuff, but at least the victory ended Glentoran’s horrible sequence of results – it was only their second win in 10 outings.

It also helped send a majority of the big away support home happy, although there was a handful who were determined to vent their anger on manager Mick McDermott in protest of the latest run of defeats.

“Our performances haven’t been up to standard, so that certainly added a little bit of unwanted pressure,” said Devlin. “Thankfully, the boys all did their job to get us over the line.

“Our aim was to be in the draw for he next round and we achieved that. There was a bit of extra pressure on us because of the circumstances building up to the game.

“It’s been well documented our form hasn’t been good over the past couple of months.”

Devlin got the party started by firing home a pass from Ruaidhri Donnelly before Danny Purkis powered in a corner kick from the impressive Aaron Wightman.

“The early goals settled us down,” added former Dungannon Swifts players Devlin. “We knew if we were to strike early, we could then control the game.

“We created plenty of chances over the 90 minutes and I suppose the only tinge of disappointment was we didn’t score more goals. On another day, we could have scored five, six or even seven.

“It’s now about building confidence and belief again after our poor run.

“Every team has a poor run sometime. Linfield had a poor run earlier in the campaign and they were written off by most people, but they bounced back.

“There is a long season still ahead of us. We are only half way through it, we’ve 19 games left, so anything can happen.”

Devlin insists it is important the Glens maintain the momentum ahead of Tuesday night’s vital League game against Ballymena United at the BetMcLean Oval.

“We’ve got the win we so desperately wanted, so we need to build on it,” he went on. “We played Ballymena last week and they beat us, we need to right the wrongs from that game.”

Moyola boss Stephen Hughes believes his boys deserve an enormous amount of credit for ther performance.

“We were up against a top Premiership side, it was a step up in class. Two quick goals knocked the stuffing out of us a little bit and also really killed off the game,” he said.

“I was pleased with our second half display and the fitness levels we showed. We restricted Glentoran to very few chances after the restart.”

MOYOLA PARK: Findlay, Harris, Vauls, McLean, McIlveen, Parkhill, Kelly (Sullivan 74), Patchett (Francis 82), Gray, Gillan, McNeill (Smith 66).

Unused subs: Logan, Getty, Best, King.

GLENTORAN: McCarey, Kane, Marshall, J Donnelly (Clucass 78), R Donnelly, McClean, Devlin, Smith, Crowe, Purkis, Wightman.

Unused subs: Webber, Murray, Murphy, Plum, Russell, McLaughlin.

REFEREE: Declan Hassan.