Eu Reds: Haugesund
As the countdown to Cliftonville’s imminent return to European football heats up, our latest retrospective steps back five years to a keenly-contested battle in BT14.
For it was on this day in 2019 that the Reds suffered a narrow defeat to Haugesund in the first leg of the sides’ Europa League first qualifying round clash.
After Joe Gormley and Ibrahima Kone had threatened a breakthrough at either end, home skipper Chris Curran went close to ending the stalemate when he flashed a header just wide from Conor McDermott’s delivery.
The visitors – who were the first Norwegian Club side to visit Solitude on competitive duty – opened the scoring just before the interval when Christian Grindheim converted a cross from from Mikkel Desler and they might have made it 2-0 early in the second-half only for Niklas Sandberg’s free-kick to bring a smart save out of Richard Brush.
Haugesund were reduced to 10 men on 78 minutes when Torbjorn Kallevag’s high challenge on McDermott earned a predictable dismissal, although the closest Cliftonville came to taking advantage of his absence was an injury-time header from Ronan Doherty which whistled just wide of the post.
Cliftonville: Brush, McDermott, Ives, Breen, C Curran, R Donnelly, Bagnall, Doherty, Gormley, McMenamin, Gorman. Subs: Dunne, Harney, Harkin, R Curran (for C Curran, 66 mins), Foster, Wilson, Maguire (for Gorman, 86 mins).