‘We can only look after ourselves’ says Newry City boss Darren Mullen heading into Saturday’s game against Ballyclare Comrades

Newry City got their end-of-season split run off to a perfect start with a 3-0 victory over Ballinamallard United, but they need to follow it up with three more points against Ballyclare Comrades on Saturday.

With four games to go, bottom-placed Newry (30 points) could potentially leapfrog eleventh-placed Newington (32 points), if they win and the Belfast side fail to defeat Armagh City at Holm Park.

With so few games left, it looks unlikely that Ballinamallard United (37 points), Ballyclare Comrades or Armagh City (both 38 points) will be dragged into the relegation dogfight, meaning Newry’s objective will be to finish higher than Newington and give themselves a chance of survival via the relegation / promotion play-off.

However, speaking after Tuesday night’s win, manager Darren Mullen says that his side can’t focus on results elsewhere, they have to take care of their own business.

“We can only look after ourselves,” he said.

“Obviously Newington’s result (a draw against Institute) means that it is back in our own hands. But that doesn’t make it any easier, we still have to win the next four games to give ourselves a chance. But it would have been disappointing tonight if we had have known that they had drawn, but we hadn’t capitalised on it.

“So, thankfully we have done that, but all we can do is look after ourselves. Whatever other teams do is outside of our control, what is in our control is Ballyclare on Saturday.”

And going into Saturday’s game, Mullen says it will be a case of his side needing to pick up from where they left off during the week.

“We want more of the same – if we play like that, we’ll be hard to handle.

“We played really well tonight and the 3-0 score-line doesn’t flatter us. We know that Ballyclare had a good win tonight (3-1 against Armagh City), but again, we just need to make sure that we’re doing what we did tonight.

“We need to take that intensity and aggression that we had tonight into the game and show the defensive capabilities that we showed tonight.

“It’s one we’re looking forward to and hopefully we can get another big crowd down.”