Portadown 3-4 Newry Olympic

Newry Olympic 1s travelled to Portadown on Saturday after a week's break, needing a win to keep their hopes of avoiding relegation alive. This time they found themselves on the right side of a slender win in a seven goal thriller.

Newry started sluggishly, giving possession away in important areas of the pitch, but somehow they found themselves one goal to the good. After a goalmouth scramble, Keith McWilliams was able to react first and poke the ball home to give Olympic the lead.

However, the lead was short lived and again after some poor play from Newry, Portadown broke away and fired home to get back on level terms. The home side then made it two just five minutes later.  They again jumped on a poor pass out of defence to create a two on one and slot home past McGivern in nets.

Losing the lead seemed to waken the Olympic side up and they created a number of scoring opportunities, but they found the Portadown keeper in great form, saving three shots in a row at one point. He could not do anything however with a well worked short corner which Andrew Shekleton deflected home to get Newry level at the break.

Newry kept this pressure up in the second half, with Portadown’s keeper again pulling off a number of great saves. He was beaten eventually when Josh Porter fired a half volley across the circle and Kris Fletcher dived in to deflect the ball over the line.

It was four soon after when Ivan Steen as usual, found himself in the right place at the right time and rocket home into the bottom corner from the edge of the circle.

Newry kept it tight as they tried to see out the game, but with eight minutes left, Portadown did get another one back to make the last few minutes a nervy affair.

The visitors held on though and deservedly came away with all three points.

Newry Olympic

R. McGivern, C. Henning, C. Holmes, A. Baird, J. Greer (Capt), I. Steen, P. McKnight, C. McKnight. K. Fletcher, A. Shekleton, K. McWilliams, J. Taylor, J. Gregg, C. Large, J Porter