Standard bearer

Far from getting swept away in the jubilation of Cliftonville’s dramatic victory over Ballymena United, Jim Magilton admitted to being far from impressed with his side’s performance.

Unfortunate to fall behind when Success Edogun’s cross took a wicked deflection off Micheal Glynn and looped over goalkeeper Lewis Ridd, the Reds hit back in a whirlwind start to the second-half that saw Adebayo Fapetu power home an equaliser before debutant Sean Robertson’s cross was turned into his own net by defender Stephen O’Donnell.

Cliftonville were then awarded a penalty which could have made for a more comfortable afternoon’s work but – following a lengthy delay while O’Donnell disputed the second booking he picked up for a handball offence committed by team-mate Ben Kennedy – Joe Gormley lifted his spot kick over the top.

That looked set to haunt the Reds when Aaron Jarvis drew the 10-men level with five minutes left on the clock, but there was still time for Jack Keaney to squeeze home an injury-time free-kick and have the final say of a madcap clash.

While acknowledging his pleasure with the result, Magilton lamented: “I always talk about standard of performance and I wasn’t particularly happy with our performance.

“I wasn’t happy with our game management and decision-making – all of the things that makes a really good team stand out. That is a lesson for us and, of course, it’s four wins and I’m delighted with that – honestly, secretly I’m delighted and probably by next Thursday, I’ll have calmed down slightly, but standards have to be better.”

He continued: “It was a mad 90 minutes. I thought we started brightly and then we conceded a poor goal where we’ve turned the ball over and obviously it takes a deflection but it’s still a poor goal. Ballymena came with a game plan and it was working perfectly for them. We just didn’t show enough tempo in our play or the sort of confidence in our play that you’d expect for a team that had just had three wins.

“We went into our shell a little bit and didn’t open up as much as I thought we should have. We needed half-time and we got a little bit of an injection of pace when we made the substitutions and we felt we had to do that early. We get our just rewards and then we should manage the game. We made really poor decisions and turned the ball over too many times for a team of that quality.

“We always talk about training as you play and playing as you train, and we were nowhere near the levels today but managed to get the three points.”