Forget the cup...Ards game is only show in town

When you’re talking about ‘season-defining’ games in mid-November, it tells its own story.
Allan Jenkins lies frustrated on the Solitude turf after watching his injury time diving header go wide of the post. Picture: Press Eye.Allan Jenkins lies frustrated on the Solitude turf after watching his injury time diving header go wide of the post. Picture: Press Eye.
Allan Jenkins lies frustrated on the Solitude turf after watching his injury time diving header go wide of the post. Picture: Press Eye.

If this was happening around March or April time, it could logically be deduced that there’s some sort of big finale in store to the season, a title run-in or a major cup final.

But when the games which will go a long way to shaping Ballymena United’s 2013/14 campaign are relegation battles against Ards and Warrenpoint Town, then the bleakness of the situation comes into sharper focus.

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The outcome of those games won’t, of course, determine Ballymena’s fate there and then - there’s an awful lot of football still to be played.

What those two games - and the one which follows it, against Ballinamallard - will do is either haul the Sky Blues away from the dogfight to avoid the drop or else plant them even more firmly into it.

Two wins would put clear distance between United and the two sides below them and take them out of the pressure cooker situation which is rapidly building.

Two defeats - and as we saw in the corresponding fixtures earlier in the season, that is not as unbelievable as some people thought at that time - and the reality is that Ballymena might very well be bottom of the Danske Bank Premiership table come the end of November.

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There are, however, positives of sorts to have come out of the last few weeks, although the main one - creating a bagful of chances - is immediately negated by the inability to convert them.

Many eyebrows have been raised over Glenn Ferguson’s selection of Allan Jenkins at centre-forward in preference to the club’s out-and-out strikers.

I would go so far as to venture that the increase in goalscoring opportunities in those two games in which Jenkins has played ‘up top’ isn’t a coincidence.

The Scot offers a different sort of outlet and it’s his ability to hold the ball up and bring others into play in attacking positions which has been the key to the additional chances created.

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Too many times this season, the ball has been played up to United’s strikers who have been outmuscled by defenders or given away possession cheaply and all of a sudden Ballymena have been back on the defensive.

Yet Jenkins misses a couple of chances and the call from the terraces is for Ferguson to ‘get the strikers on’ - that would be the same strikers who have been so roundly criticised by the same supporters! Who’d be a manager, eh?

There was plenty to admire about Ballymena’s performance at Solitude on Saturday - but, as I often say, show me a league table with a column entitled ‘games we should have taken something out of’.

In many ways, Saturday was payback for United pinching a last-minute win at Crusaders and the daylight robbery home victory over Portadown - another object lesson that you don’t always get what you deserve in football.

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Saturday’s home game against Ards is the only show in town as far as Ballymena fans are concerned.

To put that into context, United are involved in a League Cup tie against Portadown tonight (Tuesday) with a place in the semi-final of the second most prestigious knockout competition in the country at stake, yet I have yet to hear a Ballymena fan even mention that game in passing.

That in itself speaks volumes for the significance of Saturday’s clash.

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