Larne’s refreshing outlook on Santa Clara clash despite facing uphill Conference League task

The Invermen prepared to give it a go in the Azores despite three-goal first leg deficit

Nathan Rooney insists Larne will not be throwing the towel in just yet despite admitting they face an uphill task in their second leg against Santa Clara this evening.

The Invermen trail 3-0 to the Azoreans following the first leg of their Conference League third qualifying round at Ballymena Showgrounds last week.

The Portuguese Primera Liga outfit blew Rooney’s men away with a devastating nine-minute spell at the end of the first half but the Larne boss feels there are some positives for his side to take into the return fixture.

“If we can get an early goal and if they look to make a few changes or whatever, and they come off the boil a little bit, then fair enough, there might be a moment where we can put the flames on, shall we say, and maybe go all-out attack,” said Rooney.

“But it’s one of those games where it’s not going to be easy. We had nine minutes in terms of a little bit of naivety.

“I’m delighted that we’ve got the clean sheet in the second half. There’s a couple of moments when we’ve pressed them in the last 15 minutes. If the ball was pulled back, we might have got one.

“I think 2-0 would have been a fair result in terms of the mistakes, 3-0 is obviously a big deficit, but we’ll try our best.

“When you do so much work with the ball in the last few games, you obviously want to try and continue in some fashion. That wasn’t the case.

“I’ll hold my hand up a little bit as well in terms of that 15-minute period. We made the change when we had to. Maybe we should have started with an extra centre-back.

“I thought, when we were actually looking with a bit of intent to jump and press, we tried our very best and we turned it over a few times. There’s a realisation of speed and physicality to where we’re not quite there.

“We’ve gone through the pain barrier with the extra-time and the penalties in the last two rounds in this competition, so, I can never question that with this group.

“We just wanted to be in a position where we thought we could probably play a little bit better back at home.

“But we’ve got one eye on other things now as well. We don’t want to revert away too much on how we’re playing, but at the same time, we’ve just got to be more equipped in terms of realising sometimes when teams are a little bit quicker than us.

“We’ve got to revert back to a bit more of a negative set-up when that happens.”