Riada's sixy football sees off Tullans

THIS victory for Riada FC in the Steel & Sons Shield was marred by a broken leg suffered by forward Chrissie Hendrie.

An innocuous challenge with the Coleraine goalkeeper after 10 minutes resulted in a clean break of his fibula. The bad news comes at a time when the brave striker was hitting a rich vein of form having scored three goals in Riada’s last two games.

Everyone at the club wishes him a speedy recovery, Chrissie has been a Riada player for a long time and the team will be miss his high energy performances.

The game itself was played out and Riada ran out easy winners against a youthful Coleraine Tullans, Matthew Boyd, Jerry Parkhill and Christopher Nicholl with two meant the score was four nil at half time. Nicholl added another two after the break. The score could have been much greater except for Riada’s wastefulness in front of goal.

They will need to be more proficient if they are to progress in the Co. Antrim Shield at home this Saturday, when they face a good Ballyvea side who were runners up in the Newcastle Premier League last season.

An under strength Riada reserves made the short trip to play a strong Dervock team and suffered a heavy defeat, Christopher Graham scored a consolation goal.

Riada ‘s start to the season has been inconsistent and they have struggled to put out a settled side, the newly formed Riada Reserve team has been a great help because players have been asked to step up to the first team and have performed admirably. New players are now finding their feet and the team was starting to gel but the loss of Hendrie will mean that there needs to be an even bigger effort from the players.

The effort that was shown last season needs to be repeated as so far this season it has been lacking.