PADDY McLaughlin has called on the Red Army to help cheer the side onto the first domestic final of the season as they take on Linfield in the semi-final of the Toal’s County Antrim Shield on Tuesday night. 

Linfield make the trip to Solitude (7.45pm kick-off) looking to make it two wins against the Reds in recent weeks. 

David Healy’s side shaded the last meeting at Windsor Park over two weeks ago, but McLaughlin feels believes the Reds support can play their part under the Solitude lights. 

“The fans have been brilliant this year, they’ve raised the game and tempo of our play and the players have responded to it,” he said. 

“It’s a big game against Linfield and a semi-final, a chance of getting to a cup final and something we look forward to it. 

“Both sides I’m sure will be looking forward to it, but our boys can’t wait to get back on the pitch on the back of a good result (against Ballymena United).

“A big game against Linfield in front of a big crowd hopefully. It will be tough but the form we’re in at the minute, especially at home. We’re looking forward to playing anybody at the minute.”

Although the Shield may not be seen as major silverware in comparison to the Irish Cup or League Cup, McLaughlin stressed that we wants to win the competition to reward the fans for their backing so far this season. 

“You want to win everything you go into and there’s no competition that you don’t want to win,” he insists. 

“When you assess it and look at the competitions coming up, you don’t say: ‘no I don’t want to win that’.

“We want to win them all. It’s a chance to maybe take a few boys out who need games or who need a rest going into a tough league game against Portadown next week, but it’s a competition we definitely want to win. 

“We want to get the fans some kind of reward for their brilliant support this year. We’ll do our best to win it.” 

The Reds boss is adamant that his side won’t sit back as much as their visit to Windsor a few weeks ago and is hoping their home form will continue. 

“We drew 1-1 and were narrowly beaten 1-0 and we’d a couple of chances late on in the game,” McLaughlin recalls. 

“We probably left it too late before we actually had a go at Linfield in the last game. We’ve learnt from that and especially at home, I don’t think we’ll be holding back as much as we did that time. We need to be going at it straight away because we are the home team and our home form has been unbelievable this year. 

“It’s a big game for us and if we keep playing the way we’ve been playing and moving the ball as well as we have, we’ve a good chance of getting to the final so we’ll try and grab it with both hands.”

McLaughlin will be without Aaron Donnelly for Tuesday’s encounter after he was forced off at half-time of Saturdays win against Ballymena United with a knee injury and Ronan Doherty will also miss the Blues clash after a tight hamstring following last Tuesday’s game with Larne. 

“It’s another injury with Aaron. It’s been ages since we’ve had an injury - two weeks - so we were due one,” joked McLaughlin. 

“Unfortunately, as well as he has been playing for us in the middle of the park, we were just chatting about that on Tuesday night about how good he was and we were looking forward to getting him back in the team on Saturday and there we have it – we’ve picked up another injury and another man missing now. 

“The physio is working hard behind the scenes and hopefully we get players back, but unfortunately we’ve lost Aaron.

“I’m not sure how serious it is now but hopefully in the next couple of days we will assess it and see. It’s disappointing to see because he has been playing well for us. 

“In Ronan Doherty’s case, It was just his hamstring. He’s coming back from a hamstring injury and it was a bit tight on Wednesday morning when he woke up.

“Again, it is another player we don’t want to lose for long period of time. We took him out of the squad just to let that injury settle down and hopefully it won’t be too long before he’s back. 

“There things can happen when players come back from injury. They can be stiff and they can be sore and maybe it can be a wee bit of fatigue. 

“You can’t run the risk of a hamstring going because it is six weeks and it takes somebody out of a busy schedule. We made the call just to be safe and take him out of it today and hopefully he’ll be back for maybe next week.”