McDonnell disappointed despite victory

Smiling faces were hard to come by in the Media Centre at Richmond Park after St Pat’s 1-0 victory over Cobh Ramblers tonight. The cold wind had given the journalists a stiff neck after a poor match. Pat’s coach John McDonnell was disappointed with his club's performance and Ramblers' coach Stephen Henderson was disappointed not to have snatched a valuable point.

“We knew coming here tonight that we would be most likely to score from a set piece and we nearly did just that on a few occasions. Unfortunately, we didn’t and I think it was our fitness that cost us the game in the end. Pat’s full time training really showed and they were just fitter,” he said. Perhaps the one redeeming aspect of this poor game was the performance in Pat’s midfield of Keith Fahy and this was noted by Henderson.

“I mean some of Fahy’s passing tonight was superb. He’s a great player, but that’s what your up against when you take on title challengers.”

With Ramblers yet to secure a point on the road this season, questions over their survival chances were voiced for the first time tonight, but Henderson waves away the prickly question with authoritative disregard. “We will survive this season. The effort that the lads put in tonight and in training proves just that. We have a few important games coming up now and we just have to take them as they come.”

Enter John McDonnell. Would he be content with the 3 points or disappointed with the flat performance? It has to be said that Pat’s have now played 5 games in 15 days so fatigue is bound to set in at some point.

“We played in fits and starts tonight and our hectic schedule did show tonight at times. Dessie isn’t 100% yet, Bobby Ryan, Joseph (O’Cearuill) and Jamie Harris are still out injured so we had the bare 16 tonight, but we had a quality bench and I think we deserved the win.”

“It wasn’t a great match by any means and I think we just got a bit nervous towards the end, but Cobh are a good side and they were pressurising us up to the end.”

The outlook on the game was as bleak from the players as it was from the managers. I spoke to goal scorer Ryan Guy. “Yeah, the game was a bit scrappy at times, but that’s always going to be the case after the amount of games we have played recently………It is frustrating for me when I don’t start of course but we have a quality squad so I just have to keep scoring to prove myself.”

Back to Leeside and young talent John Kearney of Cobh was next to enter the fray. His sentiments echoed those of the gaffer who has clearly instilled a tigerish attitude into his players. “I have no doubt we will survive. We were resilient tonight and we never gave up and we will be like that all season. I think we will only get better from now on. We have UCD next week and Bray Wanderers the week after so they will be huge games for us.”