PJ O’Neill insists there’ll be no riot acts read out or towels thrown in despite a brutal start to the new year robbing Malachians of a shot at the title.
The North Belfast outfit had stunned 1A with a superb opening to the new campaign which left them sitting top of the table at Christmas, with no defeats on their league record.
Four losses from six since then, however, has sent the Mals tumbling down into fifth place.
The worst of those came on Saturday as an inconsistent Lisburn Rangers, currently in transition under new manager Phil McDonagh, cruised to a 4-1 win on Malachians’ own backyard.
As hard as that was to take, O’Neill admits every one of those recent defeats – and even last week’s 2-2 draw at Dunmurry Rec – has stung badly, but he’s determined to take the long view, insisting the Mals’ recent downturn will stand by them in the long run.
“It’s flipped on its head big time, hasn’t it,” lamented the Malachians manager.
“The Christmas break has really wrecked our momentum, then we got a few injuries and Covid, but I’m not making excuses, I think we’ve inexperience there too, we’ve a very young team and maybe there’s been a bit of pressure on them.
“We had a penalty against Dromara (a 2-1 defeat), missed it and then they went up the pitch and scored, and Dunmurry scored with the last kick of the game last Saturday to equalise.
“So we’ve just been missing the luck that we had earlier in the season, and I’ve told the lads they just have to work harder to get that luck back.
“But other than that, we’ve been in the games, they’ve been tight, bar Saturday there where we had a bad half-hour and
conceded three.”
In any case, with seven games still to go, and with the top five constantly taking points off each other, O’Neill reckons it would be dangerous for any rivals to discount his team.
“Listen, we’ve made tonnes of progress so going forward, we’ll be there or thereabouts,” added the Mals chief.
“It’s not mathematically gone for us, but I told the players after last week and this, they were opportunities to get us back in it.
“But obviously we’ve still to play Comber, Kilmore and Dromara, so with a good strong finish, if we can win, say, six out of seven, we’ll have a say in it anyway.”
