Institute host Portadown as promotion race heats up

Institute vs. Portadown   |   Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium, Saturday, 3pm

Institute and Portadown meet this weekend in a game which could decide the fate of each in the remainder of the season.

With just three games left before the split, third and fourth meet at the Brandywell, and it's game that both are desperate to win to keep their respective promotion hopes alive.

'Stute sit in third place, just three points ahead of their opponents, but having played a game more. Both teams come into this one on the back of recent good performances but defeat to Premier Division giants Linfield, 'Stute in the Irish Cup quarterfinal, and Portadown in the League Cup final. Both sets of players raised their games against the Blues, buy this in itself is a cup fin al of sorts, with three three points on offer huge at this late stage of the season.

“I'd say it's a game where we're going to try and win as we do every home game and we're going to try and play our own style of football," Kevin Deery insisted. "It's obviously massive for Portadown because they've invested so much in terms of their playing staff, their budgets and all that.

“I’d imagine they will be highly motivated coming down to try and get on the hunt for automatic promotion but we've done good as well and we're just going to keep going week-to-week and it’s Portadown this week. It's our last home game of the split so we don't need to do any extra motivation other than that. The fans have been great coming. We're hoping for another big crowd so it's our last home game until the split comes and we'll see what way the draw favours us then. As I say, we want to win that and we have two tough games after that.”

One of the main reasons behind 'Stute's improvement this season has been their home form, and they go into this weekend's game looking for their 11th victory in their 16th league game at the Brandywell, which is closing in on twice the number they had in the previous season.

"We all know what Portadown has invested into this season. I'm sure they feel that they should be in the Premier Division and all but on merit we've done really well and we want to continue that. It's no disrespect to who’s coming to play us. We're focused on ourselves and trying to win games. That's what we've done all season.”

'Stute lost 1-0 at Shamrock Park in August, but returned the favour at the Brandwyell in November, with Evan Tweed scoring the only goal of the game. That was a significant moment in the season, with the victory showing that 'Stute could compete against the best in the Championship.

Evan Tweed scored the winner against Portaown on their last visit to the Brandywell back in November.

"There's been one or two blips in the season and you're going to leak goals that you don't expect to happen. I think our defeats have been that this year. I don't think we can come away from it again going ‘Jeepers, we've been blitzed there, we’ve been well beat”. That has to be our mindset going into the game.

“It'll be a really difficult game, it'll be a tight game, but we want to try and score goals in our last home game and try and get the three points. That's our motivation.”

League Cup final

Portadown come to the final on the back of a 3-1 defeat to Linfield in the League Cup Final on Sunday, and with one prize taken from them in terms of silverware, their attention turns solely to promotion, with Institute one of the biggest threats remaining.

“Portadown deserve special credit for that, but they're back to bread and butter now," Deery said. "They'll be thinking they can come and turn us over at home. We have to be ready to fight them and try and come out the right end of a result. Also, we have good players; good, young, hungry players who are destined to go on and do better things, to be honest. We want to try and show that we can showcase our talents against the best in the country as Portadown did at the weekend, as we've done the week before. It has the makings of a good game, and we're going to have a go.”