One game at a time - Whelehan

Despite the temptation to glance towards Dundalk’s date with Shelbourne in three weeks, stand-in captain Ben Whelehan insists that it’s a case of one game at a time for the Lilywhites. With another mouth-watering clash with the Reds fast approaching, Dundalk know a good run of form is needed to keep the pressure on the league leaders. However, Whelehan has stated that everything is being focussed towards the visit of Limerick 37 to Oriel Park on Thursday evening.

“The next one is important,” Whelehan told dundalkfc.com as John Gill’s squad completed their preparations for the match with a tough training session on Tuesday night. “You have to win your next one, and then you can look to the one after that. If you look too far ahead, you’ll just get away from yourself. Right, if you look three or four games ahead, and say in hindsight, if we take twelve points from the next four games, we’re flying. But if you take three points from the next match, that is the most important thing.”

The Louth club go into this weekend with the chance of reclaiming top spot after an absence of six weeks - that largely thanks to Shelbourne’s defeat in Longford on Saturday night. However, Whelehan didn’t see that surprise result as a lucky break for his side, who had lost in Waterford 24 hours earlier. “I wouldn’t say it was a let-off,” the centre-half said. “There’s still 21 games to go in the league. Let’s be honest - we’re probably going to lose another game before the end of the season, and Shels are probably going to lose another one as well. We’re not going to go on and win 21 games in a row, although we would obviously like to. There are going to be ups and downs.

“There’s going to be dips and troughs, and you just play out the league as it is. You just move on. If you lose a game, you just have to come in and train, and try to win the next game. We’ve got to go out now and put in another performance like we did in Waterford, and I have no doubt that the goals will come. We were disappointed with the result last weekend, but I thought the performance was good. I thought we created an awful lot of chances, but we just didn’t take them.

“If you want to win games, you have to take your chances, and we created lots of them. But, at the end of the day, we didn’t score, and we didn’t win the game. The last four performances have been excellent. It has been very good, and we’ve played some really good stuff. It’s just unfortunate that we didn’t take one of the chances last Friday. If we had done, I think we would have went on to win. It was just one of those things. It happens. You’ve just got to work hard, get on with it, and deal with it.”

Whelehan has now had a run of six straight starts, having fully recovered from an ankle injury which he picked up in the opening game of the season at Shelbourne. And, now returning to his best, the 28-year-old is nearing full throttle. “I’ve had a good run of games,” Ben said,” so I’m happy. I missed pre-season, so it took me a little while to get back fit. I was probably back to my top level just before the break came, but it’s always nice to have a week off. I’d say with another game or so, I’ll be flying. I’m flat out now, and it’s great to be back.”