Tomas Cosgrove drawing motivation from Larne loss

The Shamrock Park visit arrives for Larne in the aftermath of a 3-1 loss last Friday under the floodlights to Coleraine which left Cosgrove and his team-mates five points off top spot in the Premiership.

Now Cosgrove is keen to get back on track given Larne can afford little time to reflect on past pain ahead of such a packed fixture list.

“Just not good enough all over the pitch,” said Cosgrove on the official Larne social media platforms following the Coleraine meeting. “I feel like they wanted it more.

“We just didn’t play our normal game.

“We let ourselves down and the fans who came up in their numbers.

“We can’t change it now, we just need to get to the training ground and try and put things right and go again Saturday.

“There’s a lot of games coming up.

“Last season when we got beat we went on a run of a few defeats in a run so, hopefully, we cut that out and go away to Portadown and get a win, then on to Cliftonville.

“We just need to keep climbing the table any way we can.

“We have to use it as motivation, pick the bones out of it and see where we went wrong and go again on Saturday.

“There’s no easy games in this league, we are just going to go down there and give it everything again and, hopefully, we get the win.

“Then it’s on to Cliftonville on Tuesday and Warrenpoint at home.

“There’s five games in 15 days or so.

“It’s going to be tough but if we come out of it the good side with more wins than losses or draws we’ll be in a good position.”

Portadown manager Matthew Tipton told the official club website of the need for a collective effort against Larne following the side’s 4-2 defeat on the road at Dungannon.

“After the disappointment of last week it’s now time to turn our attention to Larne,” said Tipton. “What the past six days have done is give me time to reflect on what we have been doing over the past month and what has brought us our best performances in the past, especially in games against the teams in the top half of the table.

“And the big thing that comes back to me is when everyone is together in everything we do then we perform better.

“Whilst I’m loathe to blame injuries and illnesses on our poor performance last week (against Dungannon), we only had six fit players to train on the Tuesday night and nine on Thursday, so our preparation went totally out of the window in the manner we like to be organised.

“This week we have had the lads together for three nights, with Monday being a video session to remind the players what we do well and also what happens when we all aren’t together.

“Hopefully, we will have a few of those that struggled last week through illness and injury nearer to 100 per cent so that we can put in a better performance.”

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