Ballinamallard manager Harry McConkey is refusing to get down-hearted about his sides poor run of results. The Mallards slipped to their seventh straight league defeat on Saturday, but a second half revival and the continuing emergence of players from the youth set up has left McConkey believing that his side can turn around their season.

“I was pleased that we got a very positive response in the second half,” he said, after his side had attempted to claw back a half time 2-0 deficit. “We are continually adding wee bits each week and we are fighting right to the end. We got the penalty in the 86th minute and we were still fit and working them hard. Had we stuck one of those chances in at the end it would have given everyone a lift and given us what we deserved for what we showed in the second half. The players are frustrated with some of the elementary errors they have made and they know they are much better than that but it’s certainly not all doom and gloom and we must take the positives from our second half performance.”

McConkey gave Darragh McBrien his first team debut, and with the likes of Sam Robb and Sean McEvoy also impressing following their promotion to the first team, the boss believes the future is bright despite the current league table. “Darragh McBrien has made his debut at 16, and it is a very positive thing for our club that young lads at that age are pushing for a first team place,” he said. “That can only be a healthy thing. They are there because they have impressed us with their training and their effort. I hope the supporters will see that if those kids had another six months behind them at this level of football it would make such a difference to them.”

It was the manager’s intention to send his team out to attack Carrick and be aggressive in possession, but he admits he was upset by some of the Ballinamallard defending. “It’s always a great frustration when the players are armed with the information and you have walked through it on the training ground, and they still make unnecessary errors,” he admitted. “Our preparation was all about how they would make diagonal runs against us and we worked in training around that very thing, but I felt people got in behind us far too easily. In our own box where we need to be very tight and diligent we weren’t, and we got punished for it. We had set out to be very positive against them. We went 4-3-3 and the plan was for Warner to occupy Mark Surgenor and I think he did get involved in a battle with him. We wanted to expose the two lads either side of him but you have to keep the ball to do that. You have to be able to get the ball to Darragh McBrien and Sam Robb and at times in our build up play we were far too inconsistent and we starved them of the ball.”

Harry felt that a training ground set piece had got them back into the game just before the interval, but seconds after the referee’s failure to award the home team a spot kick, Carrick had added a second.

“We worked on Thursday night on that corner and it came off a treat,” said the manager. “We got the ball to the back post and it was ready to be finished when Ross Taheny got a push with two hands in the back and it was blatant in front of the linesman and referee. For whatever reason they choose to ignore it. That is frustrating when you know you have put time and effort in to pull something off and then the laws of the game aren’t applied. They went down the pitch and we made a schoolboy error in our clearance of the ball. You have to do the basics in defence and keep the ball and build play. There were times we did that but there were times we killed our fluency and that frustrated me no end.”

A change in formation to a 3-5-2 sparked an improved second half display, and McConkey is hoping they can carry that level of performance through to this weekend’s visit to second placed Dundela. The Belfast club made a great start following their promotion to the championship. They are the league’s top scorers with a 100 percent record away from home but they have lost two of their four home games, and suffered a surprise 4-1 reversal to Welders last week.

“They are a team that has been flying high, but they got a shock on Saturday and they are not invincible,” said Harry. “They have a lot of ex Irish League players, but players who have been down at this level for a period. They have good pace on both flanks and a very solid centre back so we are going to have a real battle on our hands again.”

Ryan Campbell should return after a two game absence and Davy Elliott is also back in contention for a recall. Matty Smith is hopeful of recovering in time for Saturday, with Dwayne McManus and Darren Teague also coming close to fitness.