Carrick Ladies finish as runners-up at Mossley

Carrick’s squad is in the process of a major re-build with five of last year’s first-choice players unavailable this year.

The club’s enthusiastic new head coach, Davy Menaul, was looking for his players to maintain a steady progress as they came away with a 0-0 draw in their opening game against Parkview. A Christine Waide penalty corner strike meant Carrick won the second game against Larne 1-0. Carrick then faced hosts Mossley and their continuing efforts were rewarded by another victory with Natasha Munn scoring twice from open play in a 2-0 win.

The afternoon’s decider tiredness set in they eventually conceded their only goal of the competition and the winning strike to Saintfield with an unfortunate own-goal.

After the tournament Menaul spoke positively about his squad’s performance. “We’ve been steadily gelling as a squad over the past few weeks and I’d most definitely regard today’s performances as another major step forward in this process,” he said. “There were a lot of good individual displays today but, more importantly, very impressive team displays.

“We’ve tightened up a lot at the back conceding only a single goal this afternoon. Going forward, we won more attacking shorts than we had been doing and I was particularly pleased that we scored from a new short corner play we’d been working on in training.

“These players deserve considerable credit for this runners-up finish, which was thoroughly deserved.

“And with what I’ve seen today and over the past few weeks, I’ve no doubt both Neil McConnell and I can continue working on a successful re-building programme as we move towards our opening league game at home to Knock on September 21”, he concluded