Ballinamallard United Manager Harry McConkey will be hoping that his side can bounce back from last week’s disappointing 2-1 loss to H&W Welders when they take on Newry City on Saturday.

However, McConkey knows that not too many will be giving his side a chance against the side that’s sitting five points clear at the top of the Championship table, with a 100 per cent record.

“If you were looking at our form compared to them, nobody would gives us a chance this Saturday,” said McConkey.

“I know Darren Mullen [Newry Manager] very well and he will have them prepared and focused for the game, but I would say that underneath it all he would have a wee fear that we could cause them a problem.”

To do that though, the Mallards boss acknowledges that they will have to play at a higher tempo than they did against Welders, while he is also looking for more incision in the final third.

“Right from our goalkeeper out, we need to be quicker and sharper in our build-up play.

“It has to be controlled, but with a bit more tempo to it to move the opposition around, and then when we do get in there we have to be picking people out in the box.

“We can’t be presenting the ball into the goalkeeper’s hands, or playing it into areas that we don’t have anybody. That is something that we have been trying to work on, and we need to improve on that.”

McConkey will also be looking for better deliveries from set pieces with too many landing in the goalkeeper’s hands against Welders.

“The deliveries from our set plays were disappointing. When we were on top, we had a number of corners and free kicks, but the final ball was poor, it wasn’t put into the area we wanted it to.

“It is something that we have put an emphasis on this year, that we have to be good from set plays, because in this league that is the difference between winning and losing,” he explained.

The Mallards will be without Callum Moorehead after he sustained a nasty facial injury last Saturday in an incident that ended up in Welders scoring their second goal. McConkey was left baffled how the goal was not ruled out by the referee.

“Callum has been out for 30 months but he has come back in over the last two weeks and has looked lively but he will miss this week now.

“When the ball come over, Callum was clearly taken out of it, and there was blood everywhere, and for the referee to give that goal was very unfair, to be honest. He told me afterwards that he may well have missed it,” he stated.

The Ducks had trailed at half time to a Michael McLellan penalty but McConkey felt his side were in the ascendancy at the start of the second half.

“We switched to 3-5-2 at half time, and I thought we got an impact from that straight away.

“ In the first 15 minutes of the second half, we were on the front foot and at 1-0, BJ has a wonderful chance and if we score that we are in a different game, but then they got their second goal.

“They didn’t really open us up but we knew that their biggest threats on the day would come from set pieces, and that is how both their goals came about.

“At 2-0 then it gave them plenty to hang on to, and they sat in and made it very difficult for us.

“Even at 1-0, you could sense that they were going to do that and try and counter, and they did that successfully and you have to give them credit for that,” said McConkey.