McAlinden’s men get back on track

“We’re back on track,” said the Larne manager, with what sounded like a sigh of relief after suffering back-to-back defeats at the hands of Bangor and Lisburn Distillery.

“We did okay on Saturday and winning the points was the most important thing. We achieved that and we are delighted.”

Larne got the job done thanks in no small part to Ciaran Murray’s double befrore the break.

“We didn’t start off that well but we gradually grew into the game and our second-half performance especially was very good, after getting the two goals in the last 10 minutes of the first half,” explained McAlinden (inset).

Asked about the fact that he doesn’t usually rank the desire to secure a result above his affection for producing a quality display, he admitted that was unusually the case on this occasion.

“After losing twice in a row, we needed to get back to winning ways. The previous weekend’s defeat at home to The Whites was especially disappointing and we needed to get that out of our system.

“It was actually my assistant, Mark Carlyle, who sort of made the point ahead of the game that the win was the key objective and sometimes you have to think in those terms.”