Let Down!

Were you at the Showgrounds on Monday 26 August 2013? Just imagine that question being asked of Sky Blue supporters in 20 years time, providing that there is a Ballymena United or indeed a league to play in. The answer to the question is I hope the fans around then (2033), are bit more loyal than the ones we have now and there's 20 or 30 of them still following United through thick and thin, hopefully mainly thick. It wasn't pretty to watch and in theory our players should have more class than Ballymoney, but it was foolhardy of our manager drop 7 players from his squad and leave our bench comprising two first teamers and 3 untried youngsters.

In his first season, former manager Kenny Shiels picked an under-strength team to take on Kilmore Rec. and we got beat and this clanger was almost perpetrated on last Monday night with Glenn's selection, or at least I assume it was Glenn's team, for he didn't appear in the dugout until halfway through the 2nd half, so maybe he hadn't picked the team. In an interview with Stephen Alexander he defended the team selection saying that these were players who had should have been out to make an impression and he couldn't see any of them breaking down his door to get playing for the first team.

Glenn need look back no longer than last season to realise that's foolhardy in the extreme to make wholesale changes to the team. When we played Chickenville, the league leaders and eventually winners of the league in the County Antrim Shield last October, they dropped several of their first-teamers and paid the price and thankfully they did, a salutary lesson which they learned and subsequently never made that mistake again last season. I do hope Glenn and his coaches learn from their mistake and hope there's no lasting repercussions about this result. We have won our last two league matches and it would be nice to win a few more, but I think that Monday night's result did more harm than good, if we get a couple of injuries, teams will realise that we got nothing to fall back on and we will be easy meat.

Ballymoney played out of their skin, but they had nothing to lose, we on the other hand had everything to lose and almost did. How we must thank Tony Kane, for it was his genius with a dead ball, that got back in the match when we looked dead and buried. But Gary Thompson, who had been playing well the last two games had a night he will want to forget. But him and Neal Lowry could get a reprieve on Friday, for Cush, the only obvious replacement is going to be missing another month at least, but they will have to buck-up. It's not all gloom and doom, for we seemed to have laid the curse about penalty shoot-outs to rest and the players did that well at least, but it was nerve-wracking for the fans. A fan who I have known a long time came up and spoke to me at the match and though is very ill himself, his first words to me were 'how are you' I was humbled, its good to see there's still nice people and they are Sky Blue through and through!