Fenlon full of praise for young squad

Pat Fenlon was focusing on the positives after his Bohemians side conceded a 93rd minute equaliser at home to Shamrock Rovers in the Dublin derby on Friday night. After a cagey opening 45 minutes, the game burst into life in the second half with two goals, a red card and four yellow cards in total being dished out.

However the Bohs boss was happy with the overall performance of his side who he believes can match any team in the Premier Division on their day. He said:” To concede a goal that late is disappointing but we couldn’t fault anybody. We’ll get over that.”

“Like I said to the players at the end, one thing to take out of this is that you’ve matched supposedly the best team in the country for long, long periods of the game, and put it up to them”

Fenlon was also keen to stress it was a team performance that saw his side come away with a point, as both younger and older member of the squad played their part: “I know Owen (Heary) got man of the match and probably deservedly so but I think all round the park we’ve got fellas who battled and did quite well on the ball for us and kept the shape of the team.”

Going into the derby, Bohs were well aware that if they won they would leap frog Rovers and could potentially have been top of the table depending on other results. But despite these ramifications, Fenlon opted for a low key build up to the game.

“We had a lot of young fellas in the team tonight and rather than get them to wound up I was trying to maybe keep it a little bit low key until we got them back in after the warm up.” It was a tactic that seemed to work well as Bohs got off to a great start.

However they had to wait until the second half to take the lead with Keith Buckley pouncing after 72 minutes for his first goal of the season. Fenlon was full of praise for the goal scorer who had to leave directly after the match to go to work.

The manager said:” He (Buckley) is an infectious character. He’s a great lad. He’s going to be a good player. He’s going to improve and keep on improving.”

Despite all the club’s off-field drama this season, Bohemians are now only two points off the top of the table – something manager Fenlon can take some consolation from: “We are happy with our start to the season. With all the lack of fitness, lack of training, lack of game practice, we’re more than happy with it.”

He concluded defiantly: “We’re still focused on what we said at the start. We want to get as high up as we can in the league and obviously challenge for one of the other trophies. We’ll keep going.”