‘We have to lift the lads’ says Newry City assistant manager Dermot McVeigh ahead of final two fixtures

Trailing Ballymena United by eight points, Newry City won’t be able to lift themselves off the bottom position in the Premiership table, but they still have two fixtures left to fulfil.

The first of which is away to the eleventh-placed side Ballymena, which looked as though it was shaping up to be the ultimate ‘relegation six-pointer’ just two weeks ago.

However, Newry have lost all three of their end-of-season split games so far, whilst Ballymena picked up wins over Loughgall and Glenavon, to ensure that they won’t be automatically relegated.

Technically, Newry aren’t relegated at the moment, but they are reliant on Dundela pulling back a four-point gap and jumping both Portadown and Bangor in the Championship title race.

Dundela finishing first would grant Newry a play-off match against the second placed side in the division, as Dundela cannot be promoted this season due to their pitch specifications.

However, it must be conceded that the chances of Dundela winning the Championship are slim.

Consequently, the morale will be low for Newry, but their assistant manager Dermot McVeigh says that they need to approach their final two games with the right mentality.

“It’s tough,” he said. “How do you lift lads when you can say that you’re as good as relegated?

“We’re relying on other teams in other leagues in order to give yourself a fighting chance. We will approach it as professionally as we have every game since we came in, and we’ll do everything right.

“It’ll be very hard to lift the players, but that’s up to us to try and do that.”Newry will be without key players Barney McKeown and Fra McCaffrey due to suspension, as both men received straight red cards in Newry’s last two fixtures.