Lisburn boss looks forward to second leg

Monday night’s Setanta Cup tie against UCD at Dalymount Park represented Lisburn Distillery’s fifth competitive game in thirteen days so, given the rather hectic circumstances, it was understandable that manager Tommy Wright was content to see his side come away with a scoreless draw.

Extratime caught up with him after the game and put it to him that, despite his side’s heavy schedule, it had been a competitive and entertaining game.

“I thought it was. We changed our system a wee bit to match them up but we didn’t get much time to work on it because of the number of games we’ve had and it took us a wee while to find our feet. They looked quite sharp and moved the ball very well and they caused us a couple of problems in the first twenty to twenty five minutes. I thought we came into it a wee bit more in the second half but overall the draw was probably the correct result.”

One of the more intriguing aspects of the night was seeing the Lisburn centre forward, Glenn Ferguson, in action. Ferguson is still playing first team football at the grand age of 41 and has an astonishing 561 career goals to his name. Although he saw little of the ball in the opening period, the legendary striker tested UCD ‘keeper Ger Barron with two dangerous headers in the second half.

“He’ll be disappointed”, said Wright, ”because if you give him one header he usually scores. He just didn’t make the goalkeeper work hard enough. But he’s been a tremendous professional and he’s an unbelievable person in terms of how he has gone about his career. I was fortunate, I’ve got a good enough relationship with him, that I encouraged him and coaxed him into staying with us for another year, which he did do.

He’ll definitely hang his boots up this year but we’re delighted to have him this season because he’s a big influence in the dressing room, a big influence with the younger players. I know UCD are a young squad but we had two 18 year olds playing with us tonight and we have about seven in our squad that are under 21. But Glenn, being 41, makes up for that a little bit.”

During the game someone in the press box had worked out that only two of the UCD squad were not young enough to have been sons of the veteran, a point which Wright found suitably amusing.

“That does put it in perspective! But he’s looked after himself through his career. I try and rest him as much as I can but he just wants to train and play. He misses very few training sessions, he’s been a model professional, and he’s handled himself particularly well on and off the pitch. That’s why he’s had such longevity in his career.”

Finally, we suggested that, at nil all, the tie was finely balanced for the second leg which will take place in Lisburn in two weeks time.

“Yeah, it is. We didn’t want to go back to Distillery having to chase the game so it’s evenly placed at the minute. We’ll have a lot of games between now and the next one, I think we have three games, so we have a couple of people out injured and hopefully they’ll be back. Martin’s probably the same, he’s probably working on his squad, and they’ll probably be a wee bit fitter in terms of match fitness. But I think it’s correct to say that everything is still to play for.”