Adam Kelly believes Saintfield have turned a corner after an inconsistent start to the season and are hitting form ahead of this Saturday’s Match Intermediate Cup opener at Seagoe.
The Amateur League men recorded the best ever showing in 1C last season, amassing 47 points to wind up in fifth place, just 10 points shy of the promotion pace.
Naturally then, the Saints came into the new campaign with outside hopes of bridging that gap, but damaging losses to pacesetters Rosemount and St Oliver Plunkett, as well as at home to Holywood, have made that task all the more difficult, particularly with the top two looking so dominant early on.
Kelly believes he can put his finger on what has happened, with lapses of concentration at key moments in the games costing them dearly.
Against both Rosemount and Plunkett, his team found themselves out of the game early on, while against Holywood, they were punished for failing to show in the second half.
But Saturday’s polished performance against an admittedly embattled Bangor Swifts was their best to date, with Kelly hoping it is a sign of things to come.
“I’m disappointed with the start we have made, Saturday is really the first time we have backed up a first half performance with a second half performance,” he said.
“We have sort of had patchy 45 minutes here and there. Against Plunkett we were 3-1 down and against Rosemount we were 3-0 down, and we had a couple of difficult cup matches as well where we gave decent accounts of ourselves but we didn’t manage key moments in the game terribly well.
“If we conceded one, then we went chasing the game too much and we didn’t really manage the game well, and then we were two or three down.
“The game against Holywood, we put a good first half performance in and then went out second half and didn’t show.
“But again, we have a lot of young boys in the team so they need to find out themselves how to manage games and how to find that consistency.
“We need to stop conceding cheap goals but the last few weeks, we have looked more like ourselves.
“The attacking players we have will cause teams problems, we just can’t afford to give them leads.
“Goalscoring hasn’t really been a problem, it’s just been keeping it tight enough at the back.
“The last couple of weeks we have addressed it in-house and we’ve put a few things right.
“And it’s not really personnel. Against Greenisland last week [a 1-1 draw],
we had seven out and six of them were defensive-minded players, so it shows it’s not necessarily a player or ability thing, it was just a mindset, we weren’t doing the basics correctly.”
Turning to their ambitions for the season, Kelly concedes those three defeats so far makes life difficult, but nothing more than that at this early stage of the season.
“If we had have kicked on from last year, we could have done something,
but the start has maybe hin- dered us, and with Rose- mount and Plunkett starting so well, it’s going to be
difficult to catch them,” he said.
“And after that, you have got the usual, Suffolk, Wood- vale and Tullycarnet, the league is strong, it’s very tough in around the middle ranks there.
“Last year, we were probably in a similar position.
“I think we had four defeats in our first six or seven and then we went on a decent run. To replicate that run will be difficult. I think we went 15 unbeaten over the Christmas period, so it will be difficult, but the ability is there.”
Indeed, Kelly’s squad has been boosted by an injection of youth, with Andy Clarke, Harry Harper, Sam Kirk and Scott McCormick all promoted from the under-17s last season.
A fractured collarbone sustained over the summer has so far ruled McCormick out, but the others have been impressive so far.
All three were in the side on Saturday, with Clarke helping himself to a hat-trick alongside other goalscorers James Sofley (2) and Josh Johnston-Wood. The emphatic win was the perfect tonic as they prepare for a trip to Seagoe in the first round of the Intermediate Cup this weekend.
“It will be a good challenge. We played Fivemiletown who are in the division above them in pre-season, and it was a good tight game, so it will be a tough game, but we fancy our chances,” added Kelly.
“I have the mindset that no matter what game you are going in to, you should always fancy your chances, there’s no point turning up if you are not confident of doing something.”
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