Five players sign new deals

Ryan McBride, who received two Player of the Season awards, Darren Nixon, Jimmy McIlhagga, Kieran O’Connor and Stephen Doyle have all confirmed their place in Kincaid’s squad for the 2014/2015 campaign.

However, the other double POTS award winner Neil Alderdice is still considering his future while Glen Upton and top-scorer David Wright will “probably” be moving on and Carl McConville is thinking about his situation with work commitments.

“Ryan McBride’s done and dusted,” said a delighted boss Kinciad. “He couldn’t sign quick enough. He’s a big, big plus for us. Sometimes things happen in football that you’re in the right place at the right time. Ryan has taken his chance and Glen Johnson, our goalkeeping coach, has worked well with him all season.

“The other four guys have signed as well so we’re starting to get the nucleus of the squad assembled.

“Some of the guys haven’t put pen to paper yet and have asked for a week or so to think about it.

“Neil has a young family and is thinking about whether to continue playing football or if he wants to go somewhere closer to home.

“We have been talking to a lot of the other guys too but we’ll just have to wait and see at the minute.

Kincaid also confirmed he hasn’t yet released anyone from his first-team squad and is beginning to search for fresh talent to add to his panel.

“We’ll start talking to people now and see where we’re going and what we need,” he said.

“I haven’t actually let anybody go either, I just haven’t got speaking to them all yet.”

Distillery ended their campaign on a positive note, beating Dergview 2-0 at New Grosvenor thanks to second-half strikes from Luke Wilson and David Wright. That sealed a 10th place finish in Championship One to round off what has been a testing 12 months for the Whites.

Kincaid said: “Overall, we would love to have been higher up the league table. We had some very disappointing results this year, particularly getting beaten by Queen’s in the Irish Cup. That was a big chance for us.

“We were trying to stabilise the club after having no players last summer. For one reason or another, as I’ve said before, we were rarely able to keep the same starting line-up two weeks in a row and then with my health scare in the middle of the season, I suppose we can be thankful for small mercies and that we’re still in the Championship.

“It was a good result on Saturday anyway and it was presentation day as well so it was nice to send everyone home happy, which didn’t happen very often this season.

“Neil and Ryan cleaned up most of the awards and deservedly so.”

Alderdice was named as the Lisburn Whites and Whites Programme’s Player of the Season while McBride pipped him to the New City Whites Player of the Season and Match-day Stewards POTS awards.