Chicken Lickin!

Please forgive me for using Dessie Loughrey's call sign for my post title this week, it just seemed apt. We went down to Stangmore Park, Dungannon, where truth be told we have struggled in the past and came away with a merited victory. It was close in the end and maybe they deserved a draw, but with the help of our keeper Dwayne Nelson, we held out a victory. Our defence was at 'sixes and sevens' at times, but Dwayne's calming influence, not to mention two wonder saves, helped us to pull through. The victory was all the more remarkable when we discovered that we were the first team to beat the Swifts at Stangmore, in the league this season.

Stangmore is a tidy ground, with a good playing surface, but one of the things they got wrong on Saturday, was no loud speaker announcements. It's nice to be told how much injury time the ref has added on and to hear the subs names, whether you recognise them or not, but alas on Saturday, we were left to our own devices. In our last home match, Kingo was missing from his usual speaker announcements, no doubt touring America or some far flung place, but I hope he'll be reinstated to his usual perch this Saturday, for the visit of Linfield. Don Stirling, who fills in for Kingo, does an excellent job, but with all the will in the world, he's not a showman, like our Kingo.

Excuse me,I got sidetracked for a moment, but it was nice to see Liggie getting a goal at Stangmore, for it would be fair to say, he has struggled to find his best form since he came to us in last January's transfer window. Hopefully his confidence will return and I would dearly love to see get a goal this Saturday, to cement his place in our team, as we have have a few tough matches coming up. With the news of Johnny Taylor signing a 2 year extension to his contract, things looked set fair for United to start to pick up some points and we really need them. Steely McBride was an adequate replacement for the injured Ruddy and hopefully he came through last Saturday's match unscathed.

Thommo is starting to show the kind of form that we have come to expect from him and I fervently hope he'll continue in that vein this weekend. We are going to need our midfielders firing on all cylinders and that to that end maybe we'll have to do without our talisman Cush. It's fair to say Cush isn't up to full fitness and he's struggling to fit in to our new 4,4,2 formation, but fit in he must. Of course Spike could go back to his preferred 4,3,3 permutation, but I hope not. After last Saturday's merited victory, we are really going to have to pull out all the stops this weekend against the league leaders.

There will be a minutes silence before this Saturday's game remembering Gareth Scates wife Leslie, who tragically died in Hospital this week after being involved in a car crash last week. Scatesy played for both Linfield and United and our prayers and thoughts are with him and his young family at this sad time.