Dunne: We self-destructed

Cork City boss Tommy Dunne was left highly frustrated by his side’s second half performance at the Brandywell last night as Derry City defeated the Premier Division new boys 2-0.

Mark Farren opened the scoring on 48 minutes for the Candystripes before Stephen McLaughlin capitalised on a howler from Mark McNulty to wrap up the points and Dunne claimed after the game that his side pressed the ‘self-destruct button’.
 

“We didn’t give ourselves a chance and we’re just giving away silly goals,” Dunne said. “We pressed the self-destruct button. We couldn’t hold the ball up. There was some bad defending and the second goal speaks for itself. It was bad enough giving away the first one because it lost our momentum in the game but once we gave away such a soft goal for the second one, it was over as a contest.”
 

Dunne insists that despite a good opening half from City that they need to stop conceding soft goals before they leave themselves with too much work to do later in the season. After a promising first half showing, City threw it all away at the beginning of the second and the Dubliner believes his team need to improve defensively to stand any chance in games.
 

“It’s difficult because we don’t want to be losing matches. That’s three with one draw out of our first four matches and it’s not good enough. There are going to be tough games but if you give soft goals away you’re not giving yourself a chance."

“We’re now going into a league cup game on Monday before Bray come down and we need to get things right quickly because otherwise we’re going to leave ourselves with too much to do later in the season. At the end of it all, the first half was decent enough from us but soft goals cost you games.
 

“We’ve got to get back to believing we can play a bit more football. Teams are going to try and stop you from playing but we need to be prepared to do a bit extra to make sure we can play. We need to start working a bit harder to do that.”
 

The team returned home immediately after full-time last night and with such a short turnaround before they face Wexford Youths on Monday night, Dunne is still likely to play a strong team that will certainly have Colin Healy and Tadhg Purcell involved from the start.
 

He added: “I’m not sure yet but I’m looking to get a team that might possibly start against Bray. On the other hand, we’ve had a long trip here and you don’t want to be tiring the lads out yet. Both Colin and Tadhg will definitely start but I’m not sure who else will yet.”