Kee wants Drumahoeto be home sweet home

The Waterside men’s gaffer who watched his side let a 2-0 lead slip away at Lisburn Distillery, is warning his players not to be taking their opponents lightly.

“We have to bounce back and try to win as many games as we can, so home form is going to be key this year,” stated Kee.

“We are playing a Coagh team who are going to be coming smarting and they’ll be coming to show that they aren’t that bad a team.

“Because they don’t want to have a long season and I’m sure they’ll be looking over their shoulders now at certain team’s results.”

Kee will also be warning his players that although Coagh lost 6-1 to title favourites Carrick Rangers, they did however get the better of his side at the Riverside Stadium last season.

“Everybody is tipping Carrick for the league and rightfully so, because they have invested heavily into their team and they have some decent players.

“In saying all that Coagh will be coming to Drumahoe and saying to themselves, ‘listen we won here last year’, so it’s going to be a tough match and if we aren’t up for it then we are going to end up with egg on our face again like last season.

“We had their game against Carrick watched by Iam McFaul and we are taking a lot of positives from his report, on both Coagh and Carrick and I also spoke to Harry McConkey (Northern Ireland Regions Cup squad manager) who was also at the game, so I have had a good run down on Coagh, from him as well.

“So I know what type of side we are coming up against and we’ll be working on that at training this week.”

Despite securing a point on the road on Saturday at Distillery, Kee is looking for a far better display from his players this weekend.

“The challenge is to give a better account of ourselves, because against Distillery we did not perform at a level that the team has shown consistently over a period of months.

“Yes I have to give credit to Distillery, because they worked hard but we knew they couldn’t keep it up, but what disappointed me was we should have had the game dead and buried going into the last 15 minutes, but we allowed them to get back into the game.”

Going into the game, ’Stute may have Stephen Parkhouse and Corey Hegarty back in the squad looking for a place in the starting line-up.

“Parkie is short to be honest, because he has missed a couple of weeks pre-season because he was on his holidays and he’s short by his own admission, but he’s still a key player for us.

“We played Quigley’s Point last night (Tuesday) in a friendly, so he got some game time under his belt. Corey should also be back in the fold soon, but Robbie (Hume) scored last week and both Michael (McCrudden) and Darren (McFadden) are both big players for us, so we’ll more or less have the same squad as last week.”