Croly thankful of Rovers resolve

Shamrock Rovers manager Trevor Croly was critical of his players for their first half performance in their 1-1 draw with Cork City last Friday. The Hoops boss though was pleased with how his team improved in the second-half  where they got an injury time equaliser through Derek Foran.

“In the first half we didn’t have anything really,” said Croly speaking to extratime.ie after the game. “We didn’t have intensity, tempo or energy. That wasn’t good enough. We just didn’t play in the first-half, that is the truth. At half-time, there were not many who could have been happy with how we played. It was very poor,” he added. 

Rovers trailed at half-time to a Cork City goal scored by Colin Healy on 34 minutes. It was the first goal Rovers had conceded in the 394 minutes of league football played since the season’s start. Croly made a switch at the break bringing on Stephen Rice in place of Shane Robinson and the Rovers manager got a reaction from his team. “We could have brought on lots of players at half-time. The second-half we played with intensity and we got balls into the box.”

Second-half Rovers substitute Stephen Rice brought additional bite into the midfield and he took the chance to get forward to support the Hoops strikers. Rice was involved in a hectic two minute period early after the re-start when he had a shout for a penalty that was not given, before his cross was headed home by Gary McCabe only for the goal to be ruled out. Referee Derek Tomney felt that Mark Quigley had impeded City goalkeeper Mark McNulty.

“I think we could have had a goal as I don’t think it was a free out,” was Croly’s opinion on the incident when viewed from the dugout. Darren Dennehy’s crunching tackle on Rice led to the Leesiders playing the last 25 minutes with only 10 men.

 

“They had a man sent-off which is always a help but it was tricky at times. They were quite deep and got bodies behind the ball so they were hard to break down, as it always is when teams do that. We can improve on the quality of crosses and the runs in the box. We weren’t far off scoring off a couple of them.”

 

Rovers did eventually score from one of those crosses as defender Derek Foran, deep in stoppage time, scored with virtually the last kick of the game. “We showed great resolve to get the goal in the last few minutes so that is a great positive. Derek gambled and ran off a flick from Ciarán [Kilduff]. You get rewarded when you gamble like that in the box. He got the goal that got us the draw.”

 

The point leaves Rovers unbeaten in the league after five games with a seven point total. However, the Hoops are eight points off the pace set by league champions Sligo Rovers who have racked up five wins from their five games so far. In 2012, the Hoops had 10 points after five games (13 if the expunged win against Monaghan United is included) but Rovers slumped to fourth place by the end of the season. Croly’s start in the league is better than the one Michael O’Neill made with the club. The current Northern Ireland boss took five points from the initial five league games in his first two seasons with Rovers where they finished runners up in 2009 and champions in 2010.

Thanks to a late @deggsaaay goal on Friday Croly is unbeaten in league after 5, something neither SK nor MON achieved twitter.com/ExtratimeNews/…

— Extratime.ie News (@ExtratimeNews) March 31, 2013