| Happy with effort, but not result |
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| Monday, 18 September 2006 | |
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A clearly disappointed Sean Connor gives his thoughts to sligorovers.com following the 3-0 defeat to Cork City last Tuesday night.
"It was very disappointing. I'm not disappointed with their effort. I think anybody who was at the game will know it was not a 3-0 game but we have just been thought a lesson. A lesson in concentration, a lesson in decision making and a lesson in the execution of situations. Cork are an excellent team and there is no disgrace in losing to them. You can see why they are league champions and that they have played in Europe". He continued to defend his team as the post match interviews went on. Connor clearly believes in his team and pointed to the encouraging aspects of the display "I think we are a young team and that was a performance of a young tam who are learning, learning to try and be a top 4 team in this league. It is not easy and I think they gave it a good shot tonight. For long periods of the game we were the far better side. “The problem is at this level when you are dominating like that you need to take one of the chances you created and try and keep yourself in the game to put pressure on the your opposition. What we did was dominate after a sloppy opening 10 minutes [the first 10 minutes where Rovers went 1-0 down] and then we dominated the rest of the first half. We had 3 or 4 great chances. We started the 2nd half brightly and the 2nd goal has just killed us" Connor was questioned on whether the defeat was a lesson his team had to learn and did they lose belief in themselves after the second goal went in. He responded with this "They lost belief, but as I said they are a young team. They lost belief and a wee bit of heart but I have just told them in there that we have to be bigger and stronger, mentally stronger than that and we have just got to keep going. “You learn an awful lot about your players in this situation and you see individuals who it doesn’t frighten and they keep doing it and you see individuals who go into their shell so it is my job to try and eradicate that situation, eradicate that sort of feeling amongst the team and see if we can take them on to the next level. But I am still proud of them, I do not think they have lost their focus. "There is a lot of games to play. If anybody had said we would be in the top 5 we would have been delighted with that, maybe we just got a bit ahead of ourselves and got carried away. And rightly so. Why not? There is still a lot of work to be done to make us a top 4 football club in this country and it is going to be harder next year but I still believe we can do it. I've got a bunch of players in there who think we can do it and next year we will be bigger, better, stronger and more experienced." During the game on loan star Brian Cash suffered what looked like a serious leg injury. Connor revealed he was set to be sent to a specialist to find out the extent of the injury. He said this about the disruption it brought to the team "He was having a great game. To be honest with you, it upset us a wee bit. I think he was really causing them problems. We did not really change the system [Paul Mc Tiernan replaced Cash] We continued to play 4-4-2. When questioned about whether Rovers perhaps played too much long ball in the 2nd half the manager was quite adamant his team had not played this type of game. "I think we passed the ball reasonably well, I do not think we went particularly long ball tonight, We worked on hitting diagonals to Hughes on the back post .I do not think that is long ball. That was something we worked on. We were getting success but we were just not getting the breaks on the 2nd ball." He concluded with this statement, possibly a warning to Rovers next opponents St Patricks Athletic. "There is a bit of break until the next game so they have to dust themselves down. We come back, we work harder, there is still lots of football in our season" You can see how Rovers bounce back from this defeat at the next match. Sligo Rovers V St Patrick’s,Athletic, September 23rd,kick off 7.45pm in the Showgrounds. By Rory Houston |
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