Monday Night Football at Solitude

Glenavon travel to Solitude for Monday night’s re-arranged Dankse Bank Premiership fixture with Cliftonville. The game kicks off at 7:45pm and will be shown live on Sky Sports.

Glenavon supporters are reminded about the PSNI advice regarding the game.

Photo by Alan Weir

The home side will be licking their wounds after being on the wrong end of an incredible 6-4 score line on Friday night at Ferney Park against bottom club Ballinamallard United. Reds boss Barry Gray didn’t pull any punches in his post-match interview with BBC Sport NI. Gray described the Ferney Park display as a “complete and utter disgrace.”

“The message (to the players) is very simple. Watch the door doesn’t hit you on the way out,” said Gray. “It’s proving the doubters right who said that the players here don’t have the right mentality.”

Gray added “I don’t want a reaction against Glenavon. I just want the team that we have been working with over the last couple of months to come back and play the game on Monday night.”

Gary Hamilton was disappointed at dropping two points on Friday night against Warrenpoint but he conceded that the visitors were good value for their draw. “We probably had more chances, which you’d expect from the home team, but at the end of the day football’s about taking the chances and not making mistakes and we made a few mistakes today. If you’d told me that we’d score three goals at home I’d expect to win the game but we didn’t today and that was through our own fault and some good play from Warrenpoint.”

With a quick turnaround for Monday night’s game Gary sees it as an opportunity to put things right. “We go to Solitude and there’s no difference for either side; they’ve played Friday night and so have we. We’ve got the opportunity to go there and play with the levels of energy that we did at Windsor last week. Hopefully the boys rest up over the weekend and be ready for Monday night.

“I always say to the boys what an opportunity it is to play in front of the Sky cameras and put in a really good performance, individually and as a team and show people how good a player you are first and foremost and secondly as a team – there’s no pressure; it’s a great occasion.

“Cliftonville’s a top team as well and they have an abundance of forward players who can score goals so we have to make sure we’re on our game and hopefully we can make it happen and get a good, positive result.”