Bradley frustrated with phantom free out

Hoops Head Coach Stephen Bradley was frustrated with the outcome of their game on Friday night following their long trek to take on Derry City in Buncrana for the first time. Suffering a 3-1 loss to the Candystripes, Bradley felt his Shamrock Rovers side deserved to get something from the match but that they were undone by a couple of key decisions that didn’t go their way.

The main talking point was Rovers’ disallowed goal 15 minutes from time, a goal that would have drawn the Hoops level. Rovers had bundled the ball in at the back post with captain Ronan Finn leading Hoops protestations with referee Ben Connolly after the goal was disallowed amongst much confusion.

“The ref said he gave the goal and the linesman disallowed it,” said Bradley speaking to extratime.ie after the final whistle in Maginn Park. The chance came when Aaron Barry fouled Brandon Miele on the edge of the City box, picking up a yellow card for the challenge.

Graham Burke’s effort off the wall came to Miele wide on the right who, from the endline, dinked a cross over Ger Doherty who was under pressure from Gary Shaw. However the Rovers striker didn’t appear to foul the City ‘keeper.

“We don’t know,” was Bradley’s response to the question as to why the goal was ruled out. The Hoops Head Coach rued the fact that as Rovers celebrated, the linesman’s flag was raised high above his head. “We thought he’d given it for the ball going out of play. The linesman wouldn’t answer us so we don’t know.”

Graham Burke’s goal midway through the first half had cancelled out Aaron McEneff’s strike on five minutes before Barry McNamee put the Candystripes a goal up on the stroke of half  time. Bradley felt that this was the goal in the game which should have been disallowed.

“Their first was a good goal. It comes back to Aaron and he hits it from the edge of the box and it was a good shot that went in. We didn’t panic. We were okay. We were still playing well. Graham came up with a good goal but before half time we gave away a silly goal which was offside. We were right in line with it.”

Deep in injury time they conceded a third, which Bradley acknowledged came about as “we were pushing on”. Substitute Sean Heaney, who replaced the injured Roberto Lopes, took down Ronan Curtis in the Rovers box. McEneff converted the spot kick to score his sixth league goal of the season with virtually the last kick of the game.

Rovers had come into the match on the back of winning consecutive league games for the first time this season. However talk of the Hoops turning a corner in their stop-start season seems premature once again with this loss.

They will look to bounce back to winning ways with the visit of Galway United to Tallaght Stadium on Monday night. United won on Friday 2-1 at home to Finn Harps.

“We are very disappointed. We had done enough to get a point but we’ve obviously lost. It kills you. It hurts you. We have to regroup and go again on Monday.

“It is good to have a game straight away after a defeat. Galway will be good. They got that good result against Cork (City’s only dropped points this season). It will be a tough game and we will be ready.”