Cronin Challenges his Troops

A dejected Gareth Cronin spoke with extratime.ie after their 2-0 loss to Shelbourne at Tolka Park on Friday. Waterford were outplayed and were fortunate to be still in the game until Anto Flood’s late second goal killed the game. Cronin was first to admit this as he challenged his team to improve on their woeful away performances.

“There’s a systematic problem that in the last three years Waterford have won one match away from home each season, and it’s obviously a problem, because when you go to away games you have to out battle teams and tonight we were out battled and especially in the first half, we were terrible.”

Waterford rarely ventured outside their half in the first forty five minutes and Cronin felt they lost in every department. Flood’s opener resulted from a James Chambers ball over the defence which noone dealt with.

“The first goal was shocking in my point of view. The centre half leaves it for the keeper, the keeper doesn’t get there in time, but it could have been three nil after twenty minutes.

“I think when Shels’ and Dundalk come to Waterford they will see a different bunch of lads, but if we are serious about winning this league, we have got to start winning away games”

Waterford started to create more early in the second half before again being outplayed by the home side that have rarely created so many chances in one game.

“The only request that was made at half time was to show a little bit more bottle and there was a bit more bottle in the second half. And when your winning more tackles you have time to play football but we were beaten by a better team tonight"

Cronin admitted that Vinnie Sullivan’s miss when clear on goal around the hour mark was a blow but was magnanimous in defeat.

“Shels were much stronger starters than us. We created four or five decent chances, should have scored one of them, Vinnie should have maybe knocked the one in that he went one on one with Dean [Delaney] but Dean did very well to save. I’m very disappointed; we need to pull our sleeves up because we are not playing well enough at the moment.”

Waterford’s next two league games are home, luckily, against Monaghan United and Wexford Youths on the 2nd and 9th of May respectively.