Following last night’s 2-1 defeat at the hands of Coleraine, our Head of Media Ian Cahoon spoke with Tiernan Lynch who gave his thoughts on the 90 minutes he had just witnessed.
Discussing his side’s start to the game, Lynch said”: “We’re hugely disappointed obviously. I think that we caused our own problems in the first ten minutes or so. Young Ronan was just a little bit naïve and lifted his hands on the player inside the box to give away an early penalty. But listen, Ronan is a young player and learning the game, we have to understand that this comes with experience and as long as Ronan learns from tonight, he’ll move on and continue flying.
“For the second goal, I take full responsibility for that. I ask my players to play a certain way and with this, mistakes will come so again I take responsibility.”
After finding themselves two goals down, Lynch thought his players grew into the game: “The players came back and dominated possession, although we’re probably a bit disappointed that we haven’t created enough in terms of chances.
“Coleraine were very hard to breakdown, they sat in behind the ball and we worked very hard trying to break them down, but it wasn’t to be. Credit to our players, they got back at them [Coleraine], but it was probably just too much in the end.
“Those are hungry boys in our dressing room, they’re hurting after tonight. Although we thought it was a little harsh to find ourselves in the way we did, our big thing now is to make sure we learn from tonight and move on. You were never going to go through a full season winning as we had done in our opening games, that’s not the way football works. We expected periods of adversity and now it’s a big test of our character, can we bounce back and work even harder…that is exactly what we will do.
Looking ahead to our next fixture, against Glentoran on Friday night, Lynch agreed that the game is a chance to turn things around, saying: “Nobody wants to get back to winning ways more than the players, myself and the supporters, we’re all in it together. We just have to keep working, you don’t become a bad team overnight and for us, it’s a matter of finding the rhythm again, continuing getting on the ball and playing, working as hard as we can, and it will fall back into place for us.
“I think if you watched the game against Ballymena and on Saturday, these are both matches which we probably should have won based on performance. Tonight, if we hadn’t made the mistakes then we go on and win the game, I would be standing here in a very different mindset if I thought that teams were pulling us apart and we couldn’t live with them. Over the course of 38 games, you’ll have days when things go your way and your luck is in, others when you don’t quite get the rub of the green, that’s football.
Looking ahead to our game with Glentoran, the manager added: “These boys will always be prepared [for the fast turnaround]. The big thing for us is that we’re happy to be back on the pitch and able to play. We’ll regroup tomorrow, get back on the pitch on Thursday and go into Friday night fully prepared.”
