Stephen McDonnell delighted with developing midfield partnership as Glenavon aim to maintain winning run in Mid-Ulster Cup semi-final

Saturday’s 1-0 win over Ballymena United marked a third consecutive Premiership success for the Mourneview Park outfit and means McDonnell has now won five of nine matches in all competitions since taking over from Gary Hamilton in late-September.

Former Northern Ireland international Garrett, who started his professional career at Stoke City and won four Irish League titles with Linfield, is the perfect person for 19-year-old Baird to be learning from with the pair playing almost every minute they’ve been available.

The duo have also helped shield Glenavon’s defence, which has shown marked improvement in recent weeks after picking up a second consecutive clean sheet at the Showgrounds – they’d only had one shutout in their previous 14 league matches.

"The thing I say to Isaac is watch his midfield partner at the moment,” McDonnell told Glenavon Media. “He's an experienced campaigner.

"I don't think he got out of second gear (against Ballymena) and he didn't have to because he controlled the game.

"It's infectious when you have someone with that experience and a natural winner to control the kid beside him.

"Those two are building quite the relationship and Jack (Malone) ahead of them brings a different aspect to our game.

"Isaac has been brilliant. We're hard on him because we think he can be better all the time, but he's improving week on week."

Glenavon are the most successful team in Mid-Ulster Cup history, winning the competition on 27 occasions – the most recent of which came with a 1-0 final success over Loughgall in 2020/21.

Tonight’s opponents Dungannon have collected 10 crowns and made it to last season’s final before losing out 2-0 to Newry City at Stangmore Park.

With maintaining momentum at the top of McDonnell’s agenda, the 31-year-old will likely field a strong side for the home encounter as they look to set up a final against either Loughgall or Portadown.

"Every cup competition we want to get as far in as possible,” he added. “We'll be going to win the game because for me it replaces a training session, so it's important to go in with a strong team, compete for the win and keep building on this momentum.

"We haven't won a whole pile of games until recent times - we've managed to win five in all competitions now out of the last nine.

"We want to keep that now. It's three wins on the bounce and it's up to us to keep building on that.

"I want to build that winning mentality at the club."