Ballinamallard captain James McKenna says Ballinamallard must start games better than they have been doing recently if they are to maintain their push away from the bottom of the Premiership table.

Slow starts against Glenavon and Coleraine saw them only pick up a point from those games and McKenna stresses that it is something that has to be addressed as they get ready to take on Glentoran at the Oval on Saturday.

“Saturday was disappointing because we finished strongly and the goal we got back changed the whole momentum of the game but for me the over-riding thing is that we have to start games better. We can’t wait until we are 2-0 down before we start playing.

“We are going to have to target starting games better to give ourselves a better chance of taking something from them,” he said.

The Mallards have opened up a sizeable gap between them and second bottom Carrick Rangers but the captain is not about to rest on his laurels as he knows that things can quickly change.

“The important thing for us now that we have opened up a gap is that we don’t just sit and admire that. That can change in the space of seven days, Carrick can go and win a couple of games and if we let our level drop you could find all the good work that has been done go out the window. We have to be highly motivated to make sure that the gap gets bigger over the next couple of weeks. If we can do that we can start looking to next season and enjoying our football to the end of the season,” he added.

It is a trip to the Oval for the Mallards this Saturday and McKenna says that they will be aiming for the three points from the game which would wrap up a great January for the club.

“The last day we went to the Oval I thought we played really well. We led and I thought we had chances to probably kill the game but we didn’t and we got punished for it. It is not a game that we are going to have any fear going to, we will be targeting points. If we can get another win it will have been a very good month of January,” he stated.

The Mallards skipper also feels that manager Gavin Dykes is starting to make his mark on things.

“When he came in during the summer he said that it would take a while and it would probably be the second half of the season before he would really start to mould a team in vision. If you look at the balance of the team now, if you take a couple of us out, it has got a really good look to the team and it could be a very good team for the next four or five years. He wanted to add pace and young legs that was maybe missing a bit and with the players you have their now you would say it is Gavin’s team.”

McKenna has enjoyed a good run of games this season in the team and he feels that is down to the way that he has been managed by Dykes and the medical team.

“I’m not getting any younger and the I’m not feeling any fresher but at the same time Gavin is managing me well. The physio has been brilliant in terms of keeping me on the pitch as long as possible and then just coupled with maybe just taking a rest the odd Tuesday it has helped. It is down the manager to come in and look at the players who he has to manage and I think he has done really well at that. It has certainly helped me,” he said.