Carrick Rangers maintained their impressive start to the new season with a draw at league leaders Glentoran
Joe Crowe believes Carrick Rangers are reaping the rewards for having a team full of league winners.
Carrick boss Stephen Baxter has assembled a squad packed with experienced stars with one man in particular drawing special praise from Crowe.
Paul Heatley is still terrorising Irish League defences after making a u-turn on his retirement decision and his teammate says he is an example to the rest of the league
“He’s incredible. His fitness and the way he looks after himself, he’s an example to every one of us and everyone in the league that he’s playing at the standard he is,” said Crowe.
“For how long he’s been playing, yeah, fair dues to him and all credit to him, I wouldn’t want to chase him in a million years, to be honest with you.”
Heatley showed on Saturday that he is just as sharp as ever as Carrick Rangers and Glentoran put their 100 per cent records on the line at The Oval.
The former Crusaders man fired Carrick in front 10 minutes before the break before Jordan Stewart earned the hosts a point in first half stoppage time with Crowe happy with how their game plan worked
“Yeah, Stephen set us up with a game plan coming here,” he said. “You know Glentoran are going to have a lot of the ball at home and it was sort of trying to capitalise on our opportunities.
“We had two good opportunities, we scored off one and Danny [Gibson] had another chance to score. But we always knew we would get chances because Glentoran kept stepping on and stepping on.
“We were happy enough just to let them have the ball at times as they were pushing forward so there were spaces for Heats and Danny, and they have pace for days.
“We were covering the spaces where they would like to exploit. And yeah, we were on the money a couple of times.
“It would have probably been good to get the second goal, then obviously, right before half-time, the sucker punch. We didn’t let it deflate us. We came out the second half with the same game plan. But yeah, it was one of those ones you just have to take sometimes.
“There’s a lot of league champions in our team, from other teams and they bring great experience to our team.
“Like myself, I’ve never won a league. You know, it’s obviously a massive achievement and there’s boys that have done it.
“We’ve a lot of older and experienced boys with a lot of know-how in how to get results and coming to the Oval and getting a point, there’s nothing wrong with that at the end of the day. So we’re happy with our day’s work.”
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