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At pains to commend

Paddy McLaughlin saluted his squad’s willingness to play through the pain barrier after watching Cliftonville earn their first away point of the Danske Bank Premiership season in last night’s draw at Glenavon.

Having consistently found themselves on the wrong side of fine margins on the road in recent times, the Reds produced a gutsy display that saw them take a 67th minute lead through Daire O’Connor only for Danny Purkis to equalise soon later and tee up an outcome that McLaughlin felt was a fair reflection on the evening.

“Obviously when you take the lead with just over 20 minutes to play, you’re looking to make sure you get the three points but I think that would have been unfair on Glenavon,” he admitted.

“A draw was the right result because both sides had their spells on top and we had a couple of late chances where we could have won it through Joe Gormley but, at the same time, Glenavon offered a couple of threats too and it’s pleasing for us to get a point and get that monkey off our backs away from home. We’ve conceded a few late goals and they keep costing us but it was good to come away with something.”

Glenavon’s leveller came as a result of a momentary defensive lapse in a backline that was subject to yet another injury-enforced change when Ryan O’Reilly had to withdraw during the second-half, but McLaughlin was keen to pay tribute to his patched-up players for their efforts during a testing period.

“I’ve said it before but I’ve never known injury problems like it so early in the season, from broken bones to cruciates and all sorts – it’s been one thing after another and it’s difficult for a defence when you can’t get a run of two or three games with the same personnel in there,” he added.

“Fair play to the players, because they keep working hard and giving it what they can in difficult circumstances. That was Jamie Harney’s first game back after being out injured for more than a month, Conor McDermott’s taking painkillers to get through games and we have boys playing through the pain barrier with injuries, which shows how committed they are to the cause.

“Joe Gormley’s the same. He’s been plagued with a back problem since the summer and we can’t keep asking him to take painkillers for us. He’s willing to do it and wants to be out there for the team but it’s not fair on him to keep asking him to do that.

“You can see he’s getting frustrated with himself because he can’t do some of the things that have made him such a great goalscorer. Those couple of chances he had at the end, you’d always back him to put at least one of them away but I know the difficulties he’s having with his injury and the way it’s stopping him from doing things the way that comes naturally to him.

“So overall, there’s frustration with the injuries and frustration that we couldn’t build on going 1-0 up but, at the same time, it was a battling performance from a team that’s just not getting things their own way at the minute and it’s good to get an away point on the board at last.”