By 
DUNGANNON bounced back from a surprising 15-7 reverse at Ballymena to eventually overcome second from bottom Old Crescent at Stevenson Park in Energia All-Ireland League 2A on Saturday.
It was a far from vintage performance from second placed Dungannon, whose coach, Jonny Gillespie felt summed up where they are at present, but they dug deep to snatch victory at the death.
Crescent took a 25th minute lead through an Oisin Toland try converted by John Hurley before a Toby Gribben touchdown left it 5-7 at the break.
Dungannon took the lead on the hour mark when James McCammon dotted down but Crescent stormed back to lead 10-13 when Hurley knocked over two penalties either side of Toland’s yellow card.
But just as the final whistle was about to be sounded, Dungannon sealed victory when Kyle Gormley dotted down and Gribben converted, much to Gillespie and his players relief.
“It just sums up where we are at the moment, a wee bit inaccurate at times, putting ourselves under pressure when we don’t need to be. We are talking about it, we are aware of it, but at the minute we’re making too many mistakes to make life easy for ourselves,” Gillespie observed. “They have won enough tight games over the last three years to know [how to win]. We know we’re never going to be a million miles off, we’re just frustrated with how we’re playing at the minute. We need to get solutions quickly because we’re leaving the door open for teams, which is disappointing.”
Dungannon entertain bottom side Banbridge on Saturday when Gillespie knows his side need to be better across the board.
“We have Banbridge, who are scrapping for their lives, next week, so if we’re not accurate we will allow their energy, excitement and desperation to kick in and we need to be better, better discipline, more accurate and just cut out the sloppy errors because they’re really starting to hurt us,” he added.
“We are up a division, so it’s going to be tough and we’ve no divine right to win games every week but we’d have taken [our current position] at the start of the season – statistically speaking we’re OK, but we’re not satisfied with how we’re playing but we’ll get there in the end.”
