No light relief

Jim Magilton felt the abandonment of last night’s Sports Direct Premiership fixture with Portadown was indicative of Cliftonville’s recent luck.

Leading 1-0 courtesy of a wonder strike from Joe Toole, the Reds saw a Brian Healy penalty saved before floodlight failure forced referee Chris Morrison to call a halt after 41 minutes of play.

“Given the context of the game and how well we played, it’s obviously very disappointing,” said Magilton who revealed that, in addition to the injuries that will keep Jonny Addis and Micheal Glynn sidelined for the next few weeks, Joe Sheridan is nursing an issue and Kyle McClelland is likely to be out for two months with a broken toe.

“It sort of sums up the way things have been going for us lately.

“We knew we had to present ourselves after the disappointment of Friday night when we probably deserved to get something out of the game.

“It was really important we started on the front foot, I thought we started the game really well, played in the right areas of the pitch and created opportunities.”

Last night’s contest had been billed as the first of nine matches in 32 days for Cliftonville, who must now squeeze the same number of fixtures into an even more condensed window in the countdown to next month’s two-way split in the Premiership.

“We’re going to have to try and get the games in and, in all honesty, players prefer to play than train,” added Magilton.

“Obviously we’re down bodies and we’ve lost a few more since the Dungannon game on Friday, but it was a positive that we were able to welcome Luke Conlan back.”

On the ultimately futile Toole strike that separated the sides when the abandonment came, he added: “It’s a simply magnificent goal. I’m standing right behind it – it’s a wonderful strike and it never left the top corner from the moment it left his foot. I’m sure Joe’s devastated!

“It was disappointing to miss the penalty because I thought we’d have been good value for 2-0. That said, there were also opportunities that we coughed up and that’s something that we have to eradicate pretty quickly.”