Devlin delighted with early season win

Bray Wanderers Director of Football Pat Devlin says that he’d love to have a crack at challenging for a league title, but is happy with survival for Wanderers this season.

“We’ve never had the resources to challenge [for a league title],” said Devlin, speaking after his side beat Shelbourne 1-0 on Friday night. “Which is a shame, particularly for someone my age. I’d have loved to give that a real shot.”

“We love the media you know, but the media don’t rate us at all,” Devlin said, referring to his side’s lowly placing in many pre-season previews.

“But survival is what it’s all about. We’ve got our own little league to play in, so let’s see how it pans out. We’ll see can we top that league, that’s really what we’re talking about.”

“Everybody here, all my staff, are volunteers and the effort they put in is incredible” he continued. “So we’ll see where that takes us, and if we get another win or two you never know.”

The Seagulls did themselves a big favour by beating Shels in the Carlisle Grounds. Devlin was understandably delighted with the narrow win.

“It’s the first game, so you just want three points” he said. “It didn’t matter how we gt there, we just had to get three points, and we’ve achieved that in very difficult conditions – the pitch is really heavy and sticky with rain. You could see it with some of the younger players with cramp.”

Bray had to wait 67 minutes to take the lead against a laclustre Shels, but that doesn’t worry Devlin. “It took a long time coming... but I’m not interested in anything else... genuinely” he said. “Going to Sligo next week is a big game. [We have] three points in the bag at this time of the year, so it doesn’t matter” he continued.

“Maybe, when you look back we missed chances, but I’m very very happy [with three points].”

The difference between the sides on Friday night was a Jason Byrne strike. Former Shels marksman Byrne is edging cautiously closer to breaking the record for the most amount of goals scored in a season. Devlin was in no doubt about the worth of his leading striker.

“He’s the type of fella who you can just leave out there” said Devlin. “Even tonight, when he was knackered, you know he’s going to get something if you leave him on. If it was 0-0 I’d have never taken him off.”

“He pops up and gets a goal, that’s what he’s all about” Devlin continued. “It was a great goal, a great ball in, and I think we fully deserved it. We dominated, I think the only time we caused ourselves a bit of trouble was in the last four or five minutes when they pushed people forward.”

“But the younger lads did well, we’ve a lot of older heads out there but a lot of younger lads too. If we can keep that blend going we’ll do OK.”

Next week the Seagulls travel north-west to face league champions Sligo Rovers. To Devlin, beating Shels is the ideal prelude to a trip to the Shawgrounds. “What a game to go in to with three points in the bag,” he said. “If you went down there after getting stuffed 2-0 or 3-0 here [you’d be very worried], but now we’re going down there with a little bounce in our step.”

“And they don’t like playing us.”