All hands to the pump: Magilton

Jim Magilton toasted the resilience Cliftonville had to show to see off Crusaders in last night’s North Belfast Derby.

Having dominated proceedings throughout a first-half that saw Taylor Steven, Ronan Doherty, Rory Hale and Micheal Glynn go close before Joe Gormley – who had three previous efforts saved by Jonny Tuffey – made a 39th minute breakthrough, the Reds were forced to defend for long stretches of the second period as Declan Caddell’s men enjoyed greater control of proceedings in their efforts to chase an equaliser.

The backline stood strong, though, to ensure a third consecutive Sports Direct Premiership victory, leaving Magilton to reflect on what could have been a much more comfortable evening for his side.

“If you don’t take your opportunities when you’ve dominated a game the way we dominated the game, it can always come back to bite you and probably earlier on in the season, it did,” he said.

“I’m really pleased with how we approached the game, really pleased with how we went about trying to win it. Going in 1-0 up, you’re always very cautious because of the quality of their group. We nullified a lot of their threats, albeit they still caused us problems in the first-half.

“I think we brought a lot of it on to ourselves and, at the start of the second-half, we had real opportunities to kill the game off and we didn’t.

“With the quality that they possess – and Declan made great substitutions to try and get back into the game – it felt like all hands to the pump, which it was. We had to show real courage and resilience and a keep-the-ball-out-of-our-net mentality and I think we showed that.

“I’m delighted, obviously, with the three points and delighted with what we showed but there are lessons from that in that we need to kill the game when we’re well on top.

“Through the course of a season, there’s going to be all sorts of ways to win games and we showed a way of winning this one. That was an important message for our dressing room and an important message for our fans because it’s a local derby and we needed to show that real passion and desire and all the ugly football words you need and tonight we showed that.”