More sore points for Magilton

Jim Magilton believes last night’s Boyle Sports Premiership defeat to Portadown was symptomatic of Cliftonville’s season.

Not for the first time in recent weeks, the Reds produced a wholehearted performance that should have been enough to merit at least a share of the spoils only to come away empty handed.

Despite dominating the first-half, Cliftonville trailed 1-0 at the interval and continued to lay siege to the visitors’ goal after the break before eventually being rewarded with Brian Healy’s leveller.

The one-way traffic continued as the clock ticked down with Ollie Samuels and Luke Conlan – who had an 88th minute penalty claim waved away – going close before the Ports stole victory in injury-time, leaving Magilton to reflect on a familiar fate.

“That’s as sore as it gets,” admitted the Reds boss, who once again praised his players for their hard work over the course of the evening.

“It’s a game we’ve completely dominated from start to finish, but that game sums us up and sums our season up; complete naivety at a set piece and then, at the end, one of our senior players gives the ball away and then we have to defend a cross and we don’t do it well enough.

“But in between that, there was domination, real good play but the final third lacked quality and you can’t get away from that.

“We got into the final third so many times and we didn’t pick out the right pass or the right cross and those are the moments. That sums up our season.

“The players showed great energy off the back of Tuesday. We just lack that real edge to our game.

“We play so well, we’ve been really good at times and this was another example of how we can play but, at the end of the day, you’ve got to put the ball in the net.”