Heary takes positives from defeat

As Bohemians early season struggles continued in The Showgrounds on Friday night, player and assistant manager Owen Heary felt his side have shown some encouraging signs in the way they play but must learn from mistakes.

“We are encouraged by the way we defended as a team, in fairness to Sligo they had a lot of chances but kept going and the goal in fairness was a great strike for the young lad so you can’t do anything that.

Defensively we did alright apart from that goal but after that we started to get a foothold in the game and went at them a bit which was to be expected because when Sligo took the lead they started to drop off a bit. We need to take lessons from this because we haven’t gotten a goal yet in the three games, we haven’t gotten a point, but our play probably deserved at least a goal.”

Heary feels that Bohs poor start to the season has been down to inexperience of a young squad, but that they will click eventually and things will start to look up.

“If you look at the goals we’ve conceded, the free-kick rolled back to the edge of the box tonight for example, we should’ve had someone there to cut that out, last week two mistakes cost the goals against Shels and in Derry we went a man down and we played well in that game.

It's just a bit unfortunate really, sometimes you need a bit of luck so hopefully we’ll get that n the next couple of games but I think our play deserved a goal, it's just unfortunate we haven’t got one but hopefully we can rectify that and get a few points on the board.”

With a tie they're capable of winning on Tuesday against Crusaders, Heary is confident the right result in this game will really kick start their season and boost the confidence of the players.

"Yeah I think the right result will be a big boost, we done well up there to get a 0-0 draw and take it back to Dalymount so hopefully if we play half as good as we did last week and tonight I think we'll win. 

That will give us a bit of confidence because we get into a semi-final then and we can look forward to that in a couple of months down the line but aim is on next week to get a win over St. Pat's and try and get a few points on the board and start moving up the table."