Institute boss Sean Connor planning for future

Manager Sean Connor wants Institute to be challenging for the Championship title and is hoping to strengthen his squad in the coming days.
Institute manager Sean Connor.Institute manager Sean Connor.
Institute manager Sean Connor.

The Waterside men lost skipper Dean Curry and fellow defender Ryan Morrow to Ballinamallard but Connor now wants to put his plans in place.

“To be honest, it’s nice to just try and focus on the football side of things,” he insisted.

“It has been a difficult period for the club. We tried to fight the good fight but I told the board I was happy with whatever decision they made, whether they wanted to appeal the decision or just go with it. Now it’s much better for me, the players and my backroom staff to just get focused on trying to win the Championship, that’s all the focus is about now.

“We have been working away the whole time but now there’s a bit more focus and purpose to what we are doing because we know exactly what league we are in.

“It’s always disappointing when you lose good players and good people. Both Dean and Ryan have been at the club a while, so it obviously wasn’t an easy decision for them.

“We had hoped that people could have waited to see where we were as we weren’t in the position to offer players contracts. I don’t blame the players for going, but we have to move on and I have to try and replace and restructure, but again, that’s part of the fun and challenge.

“What I would say to our supporters is that this is an opportunity to start seeing some fresh players coming into the club and definitely an opportunity for some local young players to get the chance to play first team football.

“We have spoken to everybody now that we want to keep and we have more or less agreed terms with about 80 per cent of the squad. There’s one or two players that we are talking to that we are looking to get over the line.

“I’m hoping to bring the first team squad up to about 18 and then supplement that with about five or six under 20 players.”

’Stute play their first pre-season friendly against junior side, Foyle Wanderers, at the Brandywell this Saturday and they have also lined up Ardstraw (September 12th A), Maiden City (September 15), Portstewart (September 19 A) and Belfast Celtic (September 19 H) before entertaining Strabane Athletic in the North West Cup on Tuesday September 29th and then finishing pre-season by facing Irish Cup winners Glentoran on Saturday, October 10th, at the Oval.

“We have enough games lined up in terms of different quality and style of oppositions,” confirmed the ’Stute boss.

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