No tourist trip to Tallaght for Kevin Doherty as Drogs’ “brilliant performance” earns three points and his best win in management

Macdara Ferris reports from Tallaght Stadium

Drogheda United boss Kevin Doherty hailed his team’s 2-1 win over Shamrock Rovers as “a massive win and a brilliant performance”.

While it was the Drogs’ first win in Tallaght since July 2014, it means United are now unbeaten in their last five league fixtures against the Hoops including two wins.

When asked was it his best win in management, Doherty said: “Yeah it is. Given the context that they had just won six in a row against far better teams than us.”

The Boynesiders had come into the game with only two points from their last seven matches but Doherty had spoken about how well his team had performed in those matches and got a positive result in Dublin 24.

“We haven’t played a bad game all year, we just haven’t picked up results. It was a different type of performance to last week (in 3-0 defeat to St. Pats) where we were creating a load of chances,” said Doherty. “We were very, very clinical tonight.”

His team were clinical alright converting two goals from their three shots on target from the eight taken. Shamrock Rovers had 29 attempts on goal with 9 on target. No team has come to Tallaght this season and had so little of the ball (23%).

“We didn’t come here just to time-waste. I said in my pre-match interview, we came here to get something. I was asked before ‘It’s a great place,’ but I said we’re not tourists, we are coming here to try and get something. Yes you have to be organised, structured and defend well, and we had to defend really well.”

Freddie Draper opened the scoring just beforr half time outwitting Sean Hoare and Pico Lopes racing onto a clearance from Conor Keeley. Dayle Rooney rounded off a super passing moved by United to double the lead in the 57^th minute.

“The two goals were amazing but the lads stuck to the game plan. If you have a group of players who are willing to listen and implement the plan, it wasn’t really complicated, keep compact and force them wide, win it back and get it up to Freddie.

“Rovers are a brilliant team with a brilliant manager and coaches, but they generally leave one at the back and I knew Freddie would get a chance.”

Rory Gaffney pulled a goal back 11 minutes from time but the Drogheda defence stood firm to get their first win in eight matches.

“The pleasing part of it was the fact that they scored and we didn’t collapse. I have seen it happen here.  It’s happened here already this season plenty of times. Colin McCabe (in goal) I thought he was absolutely brilliant tonight and won us the three points.

Next up for Drogheda are games at home against the bottom two teams in the league but they will be missing Gary Deegan in their next match (against UCD) after he picked up second half yellow card. “I saw Cork won tonight but we’re now two points off Sligo so we’ll take the positives.”

“If this doesn’t give us belief, I mean Jesus, all it does is justify all the hard work. We have been very clear with the message to the players for the last three or four weeks. We were not going to start doing things differently. We were playing really, really well. I didn’t ask them to work harder because as far as I’m concerned they couldn’t work any harder..

“If you start ripping things up and if maybe someone makes a mistake or another mistake and you start chopping and changing it, it doesn’t do anything for anyone’s confidence. We made mistakes last week, got beaten, more less the same team this week only Manny comes in.”

Doherty only named seven players on the bench in Tallaght, including two goalkeepers but is hoping to have more players available to him next week. “We didn’t fill the bench tonight, everyone on the bench bar Adam Foley was under-18, never mind under-19.”

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