Loss was unacceptable: Magilton

Jim Magilton said there were “no excuses” for Cliftonville’s performance in yesterday’s BetMcLean European Play-Off semi-final.

The Reds’ season was brought to a disappointing conclusion with a 2-1 defeat to Dungannon Swifts at Solitude where, following Adam Glenny’s opener, Luke Conlan levelled matters only for Kealan Dillon to have the final say.

Magilton felt his players failed to rise to the occasion when the big stage demanded it.

“We let so many people down today,” he acknowledged.

“Dungannon deserved to win the game, we have to say that. But for us, we were nowhere near the levels.

“You’re going in at half-time after both teams have conceded poor goals from set plays. We settled down in the second-half and expected an onslaught and we didn’t get that. We didn’t test the goalkeeper enough, we didn’t ask enough questions and it’s probably typical of big games – we’ve let ourselves down badly in big games.

“There weren’t enough leaders in the team, there weren’t enough people smelling blood.”

Having suffered penalty shootout defeats in exiting the BetMcLean Cup and Irish Cup either side of a County Antrim Shield loss by the same method, Magilton noted that his team had come out on the wrong side of a number of fine margins this season.

“It’s so, so disappointing,” he added.

“It’s a really poor end to what has probably been a really poor season. There was a lot of ‘what ifs?’ – losing on penalties, you can look to that; you can look to semi-final losses, the County Antrim Shield Final loss, quarter-final losses, whatever it is, but today was an opportunity for players to really stand up and be counted and we didn’t. We have to accept that that was an unacceptable performance.

“There are zero excuses, no excuses. I’m not looking for excuses. I just thought we were so, so poor. We lacked energy and intensity.

“That was winner takes all and that’s what turned up for us. I thought it was an awful performance.”