Hughes remains upbeat despite Steel Cup exit

But is Carrick manager Michael Hughes downcast? Not at all! It may be a surprise to many that the boss is not reading the riot act. Rather, he is singing the praises of his players.

“We were 2-0 up and cruising after 20 minutes and perhaps could have added to our tally. But after half an hour, Sencer Yilmaz who is so enthusiastic and wants to do so well, picked up a second yellow card and got himself sent off – and that changed the whole game. But, despite that, I have to say the lads were absolutely brilliant and did not deserve to lose.

“It would be easy to be angry with Sencer but he had scored the first goal and had a hand in the second. So he had helped us build a platform which should have seen us go on and win the game.”

Ards hit back in the second half to level at 2-2 before Carrick keeper Simon Steele was sent off. The game then went into extra-time when full-back Chris Murray was also given his marching orders.

“It would be easy to scream and shout about the referee, but I am not going to blame the referee because he was in an impossible position. There were no linesmen to assist him.

“That’s the way this Steel and Sons competition is run, they don’t use linesmen. It’s quite frustrating, there’s no doubt about that. But the referee can’t see everything – he can’t be in the right place to adjudicate on offside decisions and he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head.

“The bottom line, however, is that we are out of the competition even though we were the better team by far. Okay, on a given day, any team can play better than another, so it doesn’t mean that we are definitely a better side than Ards.

“But it is some comfort knowing we more than matched them and it was a freak combination of factors which brought about this disappointing defeat.” assured the Carrick manager.

Hughes claimed it is not clear whether Gary Haveron and Ards’ Paul McDowell were shown red cards after the game after an exhange as they left the pitch.

“One way or the other, we have been left potentially down to the bare bones as we prepare to select a team to face Tobermore United (2pm kick-off) in a match which was meant to be a home fixture on Saturday, but they have kindly acceded to a request to switch the game to Fortwilliam Park.

“We will be trying to bounce back, but it won’t be easy. There are no push-overs in this league and they are certainly far from that. But we have a first-team squad of 16 or 17 players, so we will be down to 12 or 13 for this fixture and I will draft in some of the best players from the U18s or U19s and I am still confident we will be good enough to win,” added the determined manager.