Opinion: Bottom six again - but cup glory would ease blow

It’s a bit like slipping into your comfy tracksuit bottoms, or slumping onto a soft sofa - you know you should be probably be doing something more but there’s an air of cosy familiarity to it.

I’ve made the point several times in this column that reaching the top six by the end of March shouldn’t be viewed as some sort of ‘success’.

But by the same token, there comes a time where you have to look at whether progress is being made in the league championship which is the true litmus test of any team’s season.

The stats show that while the Sky Blues are generally increasing their points tally year-on-year, it’s by painfully slow margins.

If you consider defeats in their previous two games, Ballymena had amassed 41 points by the time they had played 30 league games - that equals their best 33-game pre-split total, set in 2010-11.

So if United can avoid defeat against Glenavon on Saturday, they will have set their best ever points tally for a 33-game ‘regular season’ under the current league format - something for supporters to mull over for about a nanosecond on the long bus trips to Warrenpoint at Ballinamallard in April!

The annoying reality is that Ballymena missed a golden opportunity to break into the top six this year - before you can establish yourself within that group you have to gatecrash the party in the first place.

While it was always probably that Portadown might replace Ballinamallard from last year’s table, the unexpected demise of Coleraine this term handed a golden opportunity for one of the mid-table clubs to clamber to the top table.

The fact that it’s Glenavon - the club who would rival Ballymena for the dubious distinction of being the Irish League’s biggest under-achievers over the past two decades - who made the leap is particularly disappointing.

I feel that Ballymena have made progress this season, Saturday’s match against Crusaders being another example.

In five matches this season against the Crues, Ballymena have been competitive in every one of them, against a side who they simply couldn’t cope with last season.

Glenn Ferguson followed through on his threat to make changes with skipper Allan Jenkins dumped to the bench in the most eye-catching of them. I suspect the message was being sent out not only to Jenkins, but also to the rest of the squad, that no-one can take their place for granted.

On the game itself, it was pretty tame stuff. Ballymena created plenty of openings and managed to put most of them on target but there was nothing which you wouldn’t expect a keeper of Sean O’Neill’s quality to deal with - virtually everything was straight down his throat.

The decisive goal came just a few minutes after David Cushley had missed a gilt-edged chance to put United ahead - echoes of the League Cup semi-final between the sides earlier in the season.

This Saturday’s game against Glenavon had been billed as a possible top six decider in the final game, but with both clubs’ league fates always decided and with Irish Cup semi-finals for each around the corner, I can’t imagine a blood-and-thunder affair would be on either manager’s wish-list.

But enough of this doom and gloom - there’s still the semi-final to look forward to and a chance of Irish Cup glory. Offer that to a Ballymena fan and talk of top six finishes has already left the building!

* Follow Ballymena Times Sports Editor Stephen Alexander on Twitter (@Stephen_Bmena)