Serious injuries lessen Kenny's delight

Derry City boss Stephen Kenny saw his side gain three vital points on their quest for Premier Division honours last night in Galway, but his delight at a job well done was somewhat doused by injuries to four of his players. In a spell of games over the next week which Kenny believes will be pivotal to his side's hopes, it was not what the Dubliner was hoping for having just welcomed a number of his players back into the fold following spells on the sideline.

Liam Kearney, Ruadhri Higgins, Barry Molloy and Steven Gray all picked up knocks in Terryland Park and Kenny speculated that it may have had something to do with a surface that was excessively sandy.

"Barry Molloy said he heard a crack in his ankle," Kenny explained afterwards. "So Barry and Liam Kearney are both gone in an ambulance to hospital, both with ankle injuries. Terryland has a reputation of probably being one of the best pitches in the country, but there seems to be a ridiculous excess of sand on the pitch tonight. I don’t know what that’s about but Ruaidhri Higgins has twisted his knee as well and had to come off.

"I can’t say with any great certainty that the pitch has contributed to that but it seems extremely coincidental. None of the Galway players seemed to be affected by it so I don’t know why that is, maybe we were just a bit unlucky on the night.

"Steven Gray was going to come off at half time as he was struggling with his hip. I went to take him off and then we got another injury. So he had to stay on and we’ll have to see how we are now for the game on Tuesday against St Pat’s and then we’re away to Sligo on Friday, so this will test our squad. But we have good young players to back that up so it’s going to just be a test for our squad."

The Candy Stripes will probably not pick up an easier win all season than that achieved last night, as they swatted aside Ian Foster's side with the minimum of fuss and the watching Jeff Kenna must have been impressed by the returning Gareth McGlynn, who gave a five-star display on the right wing. Kenny admitted that it was important to get back to winning ways after recent hiccups, although he believed they were playing well despite the five points dropped.

"Well regardless of who’s playing anybody I think it was just important that we needed to win. I think we’ve played well in the last two weeks. We’ve scored six goals against Bohs and Drogheda, playing well. Then we went to Cork and played well and lost 1-0. And then last week against Rovers was a good game, an open game where both teams played well so maybe it was a fair result. But out of the two tight games we only got a point and that’s knocked us right back.

"So for us to come back and get the win that we needed tonight was a brilliant victory. I was a little bit concerned coming here. The likes of Jay O’Shea and Derek O’Brien, they can certainly hurt you. It was important that we done our stuff and thankfully we did. I thought the back four were absolutely outstanding."