Response unit

Jim Magilton was as pleased with Cliftonville’s response to their weekend setback against Portadown as he was to book progress to the second round of the BetMcLean Cup last night.

Having suffered a wholly undeserved injury-time defeat to the Ports in the Boyle Sports Premiership on Saturday, the Reds travelled to Shamrock Park for a quickfire reunion and came out on top thanks to goals in either half from Alex Bannon and Joe Sheridan, ensuring that their dominance of a second successive meeting was rewarded on this occasion.

“We had to come here and show character, which we did, and I thought it was a really, really good performance, and outstanding in terms of the resilience you have to show after such a devastating end to the game for us at the weekend,” said Magilton.

“We’d have been disappointed to draw that game but it’s absolute desolation in terms of the effort we put in to come away with nothing. Tonight’s was a really good performance and we could have scored more goals but, overall, just really pleased for the players.

“I thought we dominated the game with the ball. We did that on Saturday but just didn’t finish opportunities off, but we took our opportunities tonight and that’s the difference at this level.

“We defended much better tonight and that’s the difference between winning and losing, those fine margins.”

Though the Reds bossed the majority of proceedings, a slightly off colour start left them grateful to PJ Morrison for a couple of saves that prevented Portadown from making an early breakthrough, with the Manager pleased with the manner in which his team gradually took control of proceedings.

“We obviously pride ourselves on passing the ball and that’s never going to change, but we want to play progressive football,” he added.

“We can’t pass the ball without purpose. We had purpose in our passing tonight and a bit of sloppiness in the early part of the game could cost you, but we kept believing, we kept passing the ball, we kept moving it. In transition, we could have had more opportunities had we picked the right pass or made the right decision.

“There’s still a lot of learning from the game, we’ve got a lot of young players in our group who’ll benefit from that and we’re in the next round, which is very important for us.”