Quigley - Concentration is lacking for Bray

A League defeat against Sligo Rovers is not a strange result for Bray Wanderers. Yet losing 2-1 to the title chasers on Friday night is a difficult pill to swallow for goalkeeper Darren Quigley.

A valiant performance was not enough to earn the Seagulls any points and left them with defeats in eight of their last nine against the Bit o’ Red. It also leaves Quigley’s side with just four points from their opening six games and the main causes of that are clear to him.

“Against Drogheda we conceded after thirty seconds and in Cork we conceded after three minutes,” Quigley told ExtraTime.ie. “The message leaving the dressing room [against Sligo Rovers] was to keep it tight for ten minutes and we conceded after nine. Then in the second half we conceded after four.

“It’s concentration. Roughly ten of our 14 conceded goals have been from set pieces or crosses into the box. You’ve got people not tracking.

“For Sligo’s first goal you had Alan Keane getting a free run down the line and getting the ball in and then Raf Cretaro wasn’t tracked either. There’s people going to sleep there.”

Cretaro’s goal, a header at the back post from Keane’s cross, left Bray chasing a game early and this is something that Quigley feels is hurting the team.

“We just don’t start the first ten minutes of a game, and if you’re a goal down after ten minutes do you hold out and try and only lose 1-0 or do you go and try to win it? You obviously try to win it.

“That leaves us more exposed to be hit with more goals, hence why we’re losing three, four, five goals. It’s because we’re conceding so early that we’ve got to go and chase the game. Teams pick you off then.

“Last season we prided ourselves on this and I honestly think that we need to just go out and just keep it tight for the first twenty minutes of games, like we did against St Pat’s in our first game. We haven’t been doing that in the past four or five weeks.”

While the lapses in concentration could be attributable to the lack of experience in what is a very young team, Quigley thinks that the players will learn from their mistakes.

“These guys are only young and they have to learn somewhere – and they will learn from their mistakes.

“Like when we went in after losing 2-1, the manager says it to you. He points it out and those boys won’t want that to happen again."

There were good things to be taken from the performance despite the defeat. However, Quigley says that one of the biggest positives was off the pitch - a big crowd at the Carlisle Grounds.

“The main positive was that there were probably 2,000 people there. We played very well in the first half but because we conceded so early in the second half we were just pumping long balls into Jason [Byrne].

“We weren’t playing attractive football but it was exciting for someone to be watching. For the last ten minutes we bombarded Sligo and, although we didn’t create many chances, they were really under pressure.”

Such spirited and entertaining performances will have the punters coming down more regularly, but adding concentration to those displays is the first order of business. No matter who is watching, points on the board are the priority.