TOMMY Canning has called on his players to lift themselves for the visit of Annagh United to Ferney Park this Saturday, after the crushing blow of conceding a second successive 95th minute winner.

Having lost out to Newington with the last kick of the game two weeks ago, history repeated itself on Friday evening at the Brandywell as they saw another point slip away in the dying seconds of the match. Canning admitted that the defeat was a tough one to get over.

‘Sore one’

“It was a sore one to take after the week before, and we have a job now to get them back up again and prepare for Annagh,” he acknowledged. “It was very sore on the players and the staff. It was difficult to take. The players will have had a bit of time away, which might be no bad thing because they were down after the game. They were disappointed.

“It is hard to be critical of them because we are getting every ounce that we can squeeze out of them. There is no way that people aren’t giving everything that they have. Thankfully we are home this week, and we can clean the slate and go again.”

Annagh, last year’s Championship runners-up, have struggled to match that performance level in this campaign and come to Ferney on the back of a 4-0 thumping from Bangor, and Canning is hoping the return of key players will help the Mallards to a victory that would lift them above their opponents in the league table.

“Annagh are in an unusually low position in the table, and they suffered a heavy defeat at home to Bangor at the weekend, but that can work both ways,” said Canning.

“They can come down with a real intention of responding to that, or it can dent their confidence, but we need to make sure that we are okay. We will have Jamie Dunne back, we will have Aaron Harkin back, we hope to have Alex Holder back available.

“Callum Moorehead is still a few weeks away after he relapsed in his injury last Thursday night which is disappointing and we will see what Simon Warrington is like, but he played injured on Friday and got through 60 or 70 minutes.

“James McGrath played last Friday having been sick all week, and Richie Johnston the same. We have all those boys back and hopefully there is no sickness or illness amongst us so we can prepare as well as we can for Saturday.”

Canning had endured a fraught week in the lead up to the Institute game with team selection proving difficult given a multitude of injuries and unavailability, but despite the unfamiliar line-up, he felt they deserved something from the game.

Depleted

“In terms of how we defended all over the pitch, yes we deserved a point from it,” he said. “It is a point we would have been pleased with given the fact we were depleted in terms of personnel. It left us playing a lot of people out of position. Ben McCann was playing right back, Ryan Morris was in the middle of the park, James McGrath playing deeper and Macca (McIlwaine) playing in the ten.

“There were all sorts of things that ideally you wouldn’t want, so given that I thought the performance deserved something from it.

“I felt there wasn’t a lot in the game. Institute maybe shaded it in terms of territory and possession. They kept the ball quite well, but Jack Lemoignan didn’t have a huge amount to do in goals barring one or two opportunities. There was no huge quality on the game from either side. We had some wee opportunities but not like we have been creating in recent weeks.”