We paid the penalty: Magilton

Jim Magilton bemoaned both poor defending and a refereeing error after seeing Cliftonville fall to defeat against Larne at Solitude last night.

Following an impressive first-half in which Shaun Leppard and Ryan Curran came close to scoring either side of Ruaidhri Donnelly’s headed opener, the Reds failed to emerge after the break and, after being pegged back, were reduced to 10 men when Jonny Addis felled Andy Ryan.

Match official Christopher Morrison’s failure to detect that the incident occurred outside the box allowed Ryan to put the visitors ahead from the penalty spot, with a third goal shortly afterwards ensuring the destination of the three points.

As irritated as he was by that penalty call, Magilton also acknowledged there were shortcomings in Cliftonville’s performance.

“All the really good work of the first-half disappeared within 10 or 15 minutes,” he said.

“It’s really poor defending for all the goals. For the penalty, it’s a sending off but he’s miles outside the box – it’s a really poor decision from the referee. He has to consult his linesman, who was up with play and he’s got to look across the line. You’ve just got to take a second to breathe, consult with him, say ‘right, it’s outside the box’, it’s a red card but it’s not a penalty.

“It’s poor from us though because it’s one straight ball and, with two experienced defenders, that should not happen. So that was really poor from us and the other goals were really poor where we’ve been done at the back post twice after a first-half where we could easily have gone in 2-0 up. Ryan Curran’s almost scored and Shaun Leppard has gone close too.

“At half-time, everything that we’ve spoken about in terms of how they’re going to come out and try to and over-run us happened.”

As well as Addis’ red card, Magilton was also forced to adjust his pack when injuries struck during a first period that saw both Kris Lowe and Ryan Curran hobble off, with the Manager revealing that the absence of Luke Conlan alongside a knock that Joe Gormley was nursing on the bench limited his options further.

“To have those lads go off, it threw us off, but you have to deal with these things and we didn’t,” he added.

“As we’ve said to the players, though, the only people who are going to get us back on track are the players in the dressing room and it’s as simple as that.”