Players’ learning process over referee frustration for Portadown’s Matthew Tipton

A booking for Coleraine’s Lyndon Kane closed out the tally from the man in the middle that included Kennedy ultimately showing red after double cautions to both Tipton and Ports striker Lee Bonis.

Much of the frustration from the 438 fans allowed as a capacity crowd under coronavirus restrictions to mark Portadown’s Premiership return to Shamrock Park after three years outside the top flight centred on the performance of Kennedy.

However, Ports boss Tipton instead turned focus to events under his control off a team display short of the standard set in the previous week’s derby victory at Glenavon.

“We cannot feel sorry for ourselves after anything today, we’ve got to analyse why we didn’t impose our style enough and that’s the important aspect,” said Tipton. “Forget the referee performance, too often with the ball our players did not make the right decisions.

“Frustration gets the better of Lee for his sending off and it’s disappointing but I was sent off 13 times - now 14 - and have done the same as Lee more than enough times so I understand he’s not thinking in the moment about consequences.

“Now, if we win next week, Lee might not get his place back and that will hurt him more than anything else, so it’s another learning experience.

“We (the team) can all make mistakes so we’ve got to get on with it and the key for us is to learn from today.

“We’ve just got to make sure we don’t get too downbeat after losing.

“Instead we’ve got to think about the performance and why we were successful the previous week - not just in terms of goals but how quickly we did everything compared to so lethargic today.

“You can give credit to Coleraine for that but I still feel we should have been more forceful in our own play.

“Within the first minute we had an opportunity to play quickly and we didn’t, then we went long with the ball, Stephen Teggart got booked and Coleraine put in a free-kick, we weren’t switched on for the set-piece.

“So, we put our own pressure on ourselves by not doing what we wanted to do early.

“Once 1-0 up that made it easier for Coleraine to push bodies on but we needed to be braver.

“We showed Coleraine a lot of respect - which they deserve as such a good team - but at this level you’ve got to meet fire with fire.

“I’m not going to start hammering the players and say they are miles away from the level because they’re not...but today we were not good enough.

“We were not the best team last week because we won and, after defeat today, not the worst and it’s going to be like that this season.”