Opinion: United aiming to avoid more semi-final heartache

Before you can win the lottery, though, you have to buy a ticket to be in it.

It’s hard to believe that 25 years on from that 1989 success, Ballymena fans haven’t even experienced the excitement of Irish Cup final day involving their team.

Little did anyone suspect that Damian Grant’s heroic goalkeeping and Dermot Doherty’s flashing near post header would become the most up-to-date semi-final highlights for a generation of Sky Blues supporters.

Since then, United appearances at the penultimate hurdle in this country’s biggest knockout competition have been a sequence of broken dreams.

From Raymond McCoy slaloming his way through United’s defence to score one of THE great goals, not just in semi-finals but in the Irish Cup itself in 1992, to United’s virtual non-appearance in the 1999 semi-final against Portadown where a win would have meant United getting their hands on the silverware - albeit by default - after the infamous ‘final that never was’ when opponents Cliftonville were booted out over Simon Gribben’s ineligibility.

From the 2005 tie against Larne where a Grant-esque goalkeeping display from Larne’s Alex Spackman thwarted United at the Oval to 2010 when elimination came via the most cruel of circumstances, in a penalty shootout against Portadown.

The one factor which links all of them is that they have failure stamped through them like a place name through a stick of rock.

And now, all those years later, Ballymena have seemingly been handed the golden ticket into this year’s final - or so you might think.

I’ve watched Ballymena lose cup ties over the years against Brantwood, Tobermore United, Dundela and, most infamously of all, Kilmore Rec. Granted, you can’t equate any of those run-of-the-mill knockout ties with the grandeur of an Irish Cup semi-final but the warning still exists.

If you cast your mind back to the start of last month, Ballymena afforded a seemingly weak-looking Glentoran side little respect on their most recent trip to the Oval and were soundly trounced as a result.

I stand by my original assertion at the time that that defeat - and the reasons behind it - will serve as an important part of Ballymena’s preparations for this semi-final and I suspect the coaching team will have hammered it into the players that simply turning up and expecting victory to happen isn’t an option.

Ballymena will have left no stone unturned in their preparations for this game. Less than 24 hours after that league defeat at the Oval, Glenn Ferguson and assistant Lee Doherty were watching Queen’s in Championship Two action at Chimney Corner.

Joe McCall will doubtless have compiled an in-depth dossier on the students’ strengths and weaknesses but for Ferguson to see them with his own eyes is indicative of the respect with which he has treated Queen’s right from the moment the sides were paired together.

I’ve heard people dismiss Queen’s run to the last four, stating that they have got this far without meeting a senior team. While it’s true, they’ve dumped three sides from the division above them and now they will fancy a headline-grabbing humbling of a Premiership ‘big gun’ to illuminate the competition.

The man behind that is Queen’s manager Peter Thompson - another ironic twist, given the prolific strike partnership Ferguson enjoyed with a player of the same name at Linfield.

While that Peter Thompson helped Ferguson to some of the greatest highs in his playing career, this Saturday’s version could potentially mastermind the lowest point of Ferguson’s managerial one.

* Follow Ballymena Times Sports Editor Stephen Alexander on Twitter (@Stephen_Bmena).