Paul Fennessy reports from Tallaght Stadium
SHAMROCK ROVERS BOSS Stephen Bradley is unlikely to be ever accused of coming up short when it comes to attention to detail.
Speaking after his side’s 0-0 draw with Dundalk, the Hoops manager admitted he would be up until the small hours of the morning dissecting the night’s action at Tallaght Stadium.
It is an Arsene Wenger-esque habit the 33-year-old coach has formed, and he now goes through the video more or less directly after every game.
“My wife won’t be happy but I’ll go over [the game] tonight till all hours,” he says.
“We’ll go through clips of it tomorrow and we’ll watch it Sunday morning. Then we’ll prepare for Bray [on Monday] after training.”
He continues: “I can’t sleep. It’s [until] three or four o’clock in the morning.
“I always watch games after and then re-watch them the next day, because I think it takes the emotion out of it and you get to see it for what it really is.”
And as for the match itself, what were his initial impressions?
There weren’t too many opportunities, but I thought it was a decent game, in terms of… It was competitive — they had spells, we had spells.
“At points in the game, attacking-wise especially for both teams, you were second guessing [the other team] instead of letting it flow. But that will come with a bit more time.
“If we bang the one off the post [Brandon Miele's spectacular long-distance attempt] in, it’s a different game, but I was happy with the defensive side of things.
Attacking-wise, in patches it was really good. When we got our attacking players into pockets of space behind the midfield, it looked really good. But I think we can do that more often throughout the game, we need to trust our positions.”
The performance was an improvement on last week, when Bradley’s side lost out 3-1 in the Dublin Derby against Bohemians at Dalymount Park.
“It was obvious to see. That’s the way we’ve been all season against good teams, defensively we’ve been right, we’ve trusted each other, we’ve trusted the gameplan. We came away from it last week, but we didn’t tonight. When they had spells, we [coped].”
And finally, is the lead that Cork City have already established at the top a concern for their rivals? Could a repeat of last season, when the Leesiders established an insurmountable advantage, recur?
“I think the way the league is [with fewer teams and more games against one another than last year], I hope everyone will drop points and I think that’s the way it’s going to go. They’ve started well, but [ourselves] and everyone else needs to make sure that what happened last year doesn’t happen again.”
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