Stuart McClean believes Greenisland can still make a success of their season, but reckons they are outsiders in the race for promotion in 1C.
The Glenkeen Avenue outfit lost just twice across 21 league games during the Covid-curtailed 2019/20 campaign, but suffered an uncharacteristic slump just a few months into the new season, when they dropped 11 points from 15 prior to back-to-back wins in December there.
That got Greenisland back on track, and McClean is adamant all is not lost, particularly with so many teams capable of taking points off each other during the second half of the season.
That said, with the likes of Tullycarnet, Holywood and Shorts all more than 10 points ahead of them, the Greenisland chief knows his club face an uphill task.
“We finished off last year with a couple of wins which gets us back on track because up until then in the league, to be perfectly honest, it just wasn’t good enough,” explained the ex-Ballyclare Comrades captain.
“There are probably five or six teams, and then us, who will look at it and think they’ve got a chance.
“For us, other teams are bigger favourites than we are given that they’ve got the points on the board.
“But like I say, those two wins before Christmas helped us, but we’re still playing catch-up.”
If Greenisland are to claw their way back, McClean says they need to find a level of consistency which has been missing this season.
“Those losses, I think we were just beat fair and square,” he said.
“We had some good results in the cups, so we know what we are capable of, but in those league games, we were just beaten by a better team on the day, and I don’t think we were overconfident or anything like that, because that’s not us.
“We went into those games, and maybe there was an element of, we had a good cup win the week before, and the team playing us used that to their advantage.
“So we have no complaints or excuses. Really for us now, it’s about finding consistency between now and the end of the season and if we can do that, then we’ve got a chance.
“But for me, it’s an outside chance.”
