Institute's Brian Donaghey annoyed by Irish Cup loss to Portstewart

Donaghey held his hands up after his team's poor showing and conceded Johnny Law's men 'wanted it more' and his side looked lethargic.

“The boys were pre-warned that if you are off your guard at all, especially in the Irish Cup, then you’ll get knocked out and that’s what happened to us,” he insisted.

“There was definitely a lack of intensity, it’s frustrating as a manager, because we trained well during the week, but we just looked lethargic, slow and they were first to everything and they wanted to win it more than us.

“Their need was greater than ours and when that happens in a game, invariably you lose most games.

"As I said I warned them on Tuesday and Thursday night at training and before the game that it would be a tough game and when you don't heed advice then you are going to be in trouble.

"I picked out Mark Edgar before the game that he would probably be their biggest threat, he strikes the ball well and he was their biggest threat throughout the game, as he looked composed. His strike, the ball moves quite a bit but still it's a poor goal from our point of view.

"The first half we never showed up and I told them at half-time 'if we keep playing like that then we are going to go out of the cup', I called it and to be honest I planned out the full day for them on Thursday night at training.

"I said to them that if we aren't at it today, we'll get egg on our face and we'll beat. It's not a shock because whenever we are playing at that level of performance we'll not be competitive and we'll not win games.

"Some people's standards from last week was well below. Consistency levels have to be a lot, lot better all over and unfortunately we probably got what we deserved today.

"We probably had a couple of chances in the second half and we thought, 'right OK if we can turn the screw now and get a goal'. One goal was always going to win the game, but they got the goal late on and to be fair we never mustered a reply.

"Their keeper (Andrew Finlay) made two brilliant saves to deny Benny McLaughlin twice at a key moment in the tie and while we probably shaded the second half, we got caught with a sucker punch and didn't really have much time for a reply with only six minutes plus stoppage time left."