VALLEY RANGERS manager Samuel Gordon has assessed the first three months of his team’s season as “a decent start so far” following Saturday’s 2-1 win at home to Seagoe. Paul McCartney opened the scoring for the Mourne outfit in the 16th minute and with a little help from teammate Andrew Graham, who scored the game’s second goal after 27 minutes, Valley were cruising at half-time. A late goal from Seagoe’s Oisin Ginesi in the 83rd minute made things nervy, but Gordon’s men held out for the victory.
The result against rock-bottom Seagoe means Valley move up to fifth spot in the table, having won seven of their opening 14 games in all competitions. “It’s been a decent start so far – there’s no doubt about the performances, but maybe some of the results haven’t gone our way. There’s games where we were beaten by one or two goals, but we were the better team, then a few other games that we didn’t deserve to win but we did. There’s maybe only two or three games this season so far where I could say ‘fair enough, we deserved to get beaten today.’ In the majority of games we’ve played very well, especially in the league,” Gordon explained.
Two of Valley’s six defeats came in the second round of the Bob Radcliffe Cup, losing 5-1 to Dollingstown, and the first round of the Irish Cup, falling 3-0 to Ballyclare Comrades, who were relegated from the NIFL Championship last season. Although the Bignian Park men lost heavily in those cup games against higher opposition, Gordon was impressed with the performances the young teams he fielded in those games put in. “In those cup games, we gave a lot of younger players run outs, and we competed in both those games for a good hour or more. It looks like Dollingstown tanked us, but it doesn’t tell the full story of how well we played for the majority of that game.”
Focusing back on league matters, Gordon, who stepped up to the first team managerial role in the summer following an impressive season guiding the Valley reserve side, believes the Mid-Ulster Intermediate A division is as open as it’s ever been in recent seasons. “There’s nobody that you would say is a favourite. A team maybe goes and wins four weeks in a row, then goes and gets beat two in a row. Moneyslane are sitting top at the minute, and we beat them 5-1 at home in August. In the away fixture at the start of the season, we were beaten 2-1 – we missed a penalty, scored an own goal and hit the woodwork three or four times.”
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