Serious competition – OK

ORAN Kearney believes the structure of fixtures has given his side the best opportunity of fielding as strong a team as possible for tomorrow’s visit of Hamilton Academical…

In what will we be the first ever competitive meeting between the two clubs, the Bannsiders’ fixture in the Sports Direct Premiership, ironically against fellow SPFL Trust Trophy participants Cliftonville, has had to be postponed.

However, with that game not being played until Tuesday, September 26, Kearney’s side will have a full week to recover from tomorrow’s exploits before hosting Newry City – much to Kearney’s appreciation.

“We will be taking the competition seriously,” he said.

“Gladly with the way the league has structured it with us meant to be playing Cliftonville and with them also being in the competition, thankfully, they haven’t put that game to the following Tuesday night.

“After the defeat against Linfield that would make next Tuesday night’s game against Cliftonville massively important where we wouldn’t be able to go as strong on the Saturday.

“The fact that we don’t have that game on the Tuesday night allows us to treat the competition with the respect it deserves.

“For us, it’s exciting, it’s something different and we will look forward to that and be as strong as we can.”

Kearney – who managed in Scotland for a nine-month period at St Mirren – says he is fully aware of some players at Hamilton’s disposal as the south Lanarkshire side have made a great start to their League campaign by winning four and drawing one of their five games.

“Hamilton won the competition albeit they were relegated last year from the Championship,” he added.

“When I was in Scotland, they were notorious for staying up, they somehow managed to stay up every season in miracle ways.

“That left them two years ago when they went down to the Championship and then it was a play-off last year that put them down to League One.

“To be fair to them, they’ve had a really good pre-season and a good start to the season.

“There are quite a few names that I would recognise from my time across there to know that there no mugs and they’ve plenty of good players.

“We need to eradicate simple errors and we need to put the ball in the back of the net with the chances we are creating.”

The squad has been boosted by the return of Matthew Shevlin and Josh Carson in the last week and Kearney believes the latter is raring to go after playing in the North-West Senior Cup semi-final against Limavady United on Tuesday night.

“Josh is slightly maybe back early and it was one of those we had him against Linfield that possibly with 10 or 15 minutes to go if we needed something street-wise to see us through the game or something to hold out for we would have used him,” he continued.

“When you’re 3-1 down with 15 minutes to go there’s no point endangering Josh or taking that we risk that we don’t need to take.

“More than anything, he’s been out for quite a period of time from the end of last season with the operation.

“He’s worked tremendously hard, he’s a massive part of who we are and what we’re about and for us it’ll be brilliant to get him back out there.”