Devlin reflects on Bray turnaround

With twenty minutes left to play on Friday night Pat Devlin’s Bray Wanderers were two goals down to St Patrick’s Athletic and were staring down the barrel of a second defeat from their two opening games in the new Premier Division season. The Bray boss could hardly have imagined that he would shortly be speaking to the press about how delighted he was to have claimed his first three points of the year. But two goals from young substitute Conor Murphy and a late winner from veteran full back Joe Kendrick turned this unlikely scenario into a reality.

“To get off the mark is great.” said Devlin. “Three points from two down...”. Devlin doesn’t feel the need to elaborate further on the scale of such an achievement but his wry smile betrays the quiet satisfaction that he must be feeling. Nor was it an outcome that was entirely undeserved, as he went on to point out.

“I felt we might have come in [at half time] one up or two up ourselves, but the own goal was a killer for us and [with] a couple of bookings I was a little bit worried about it.” Indeed, there was a sense of recklessness about some of the challenges that the Bray defenders were making on the periphery of their own box and, apart from the threat of conceding set pieces in such a dangerous area, referee Anthony Buttimer was not in a mood to be generous when it came to dishing out cards.

But, aside from the fear of being reduced to ten men, Devlin was aware that his side had showed enough in the first half to be hopeful of being competitive in the second. “Coming in at 1-0 [down] I was happy enough with the way it was going, but we had a chance or two early on and I thought we should have put them away.”

Losing a second goal so early in the second half when Evan McMillan powered home a header from a Daryl Kavanagh corner, would not have been part of Devlin’s game plan. “[At two down] I had a chat with Keith (Long) and he said let’s get Conor (Murphy) on. I said ‘Yeah’, but that he probably wouldn’t get us a goal. To be fair he’s had a great week, he’s been picked for the (Ireland) U19’s but with young lads you don’t want to be throwing them in all the time. So we said let’s get Conor on and it worked perfectly. Obviously then the free kick was fantastic. It’s just great to get three points.”

Both of Murphy’s goals came from attacks channeled down the left hand side, an area that Bray had clearly concentrated on throughout the match. “We sort of looked at them and we pinned down a couple of little areas where we could try and get a little bit out of it. It wasn’t always happening for us but, certainly in the second half, that’s where we got all the joy, and we were absolutely thrilled with it.

But Devlin’s tactical nous might soon find itself being applied to the team’s defensive capabilities. Conceding goals is developing into something of an unwelcome habit for the Seagulls. Limerick hit them for four in a friendly shortly before the league kicked off and Bohemians scored three against them at the Carlisle Grounds on the opening weekend. Two more given up to St pats brought the total over three games to nine, a figure that clearly troubled the Bray manager.

“I was very disappointed last week”, he said, adding “All our goals, believe it or not, have been [conceded] from set pieces, so it gives us a little bit of work to do and it’s something we can deal with. But it is something we need to work on.”

If Devlin’s side can manage to close the door in their back line their fans may yet have a promising season to look forward to.