Monday Monthly: March

A day ahead of Cliftonville’s fourth pre-season friendly, cliftonvillefc.net brings the penultimate chapter of a weekly mini-series reflecting on the good, the bad and the in-betweens of the 2022/23 term.

Every Monday throughout the summer, we’ve been taking a chronological look back on a month from the the year just finished – with a monstrous March taking centre stage today.

Having been in encouraging form, expectations were high that the Reds could get the better of Dungannon Swifts in the quarter-finals of the Samuel Gelston’s Whiskey Irish Cup but a below-par display allowed the visitors to race into a two-goal lead that was never threatened until Joe Gormley plundered an injury-time consolation.

A better performance was demanded next time out and the team certainly delivered in a tempestuous North Belfast Derby dust-up with Crusaders at a rain-lashed Seaview, where Jordan Forsythe’s free-kick put the home side in front.

Ryan Curran scrambled in an equaliser before converting a second-half penalty that looked to have put Cliftonville on course for a rare win on the Shore Road, only for Ross Clarke to level matters with a fierce strike from distance that set up a grandstand finale, during which both teams came close to claiming full points.

The Reds welcomed Dungannon back to Solitude on Premiership duty a few days later but, unfortunately, fell to the exact same outcome as a fortnight earlier – albeit via a different route.

While the Swifts had fully merited their Irish Cup success, Cliftonville were good value for the victory that Ronan Hale’s header appeared to have secured, only for Padraig Lynch and Joe Moore to net in a barely believable last-minute turnaround.

Still somewhat shellshocked by that experience, the Reds struggled to find their groove against Newry City the following week but, after Hale’s smart finish had broken the deadlock, Curran struck the winner in the aftermath of the hosts’ quickfire leveller.

All of which meant that, realistically speaking, the European Play-Offs were all that Cliftonville had left to focus on, but there was still the matter of April’s post-split Premiership fixtures commencing with an all-too-familiar scoreline against Coleraine…

March 2023
Cliftonville 1-2 Dungannon Swifts
Gormley

Crusaders 2-2 Cliftonville
R Curran [2]

Cliftonville 1-2 Dungannon Swifts
Ronan Hale

Newry City 1-2 Cliftonville
Ronan Hale, R Curran