MO'N post match review (v Cork City)

Michael O’Neill talks exclusively to shamrockrovers.ie giving his reaction to Tuesday’s 2-1 Tallaght Stadium defeat against Cork City

The result

“Obviously we’re disappointed, very disappointed. We just looked a bit tired, to be honest. We got off to a great start. Maybe mentally, we then felt we had something to protect, although I didn’t feel we were in any great trouble at any point in the first half. We had another good chance where Robbo shoots wide of the far post. “But we’ve got through the last few weeks where we’ve had a lot of injuries and people haven’t really recognised that. And we were playing with Ian Bermingham and Darragh Maguire back in the side. They’d not played football in between 4-6 weeks each and that’s a big ask of players, so I just felt that at times it caught up with us. “We were missing bodies: Stephen Bradley, Paddy Kavanagh, Gary Twigg, Craig Sives – they’re all important players for us. But I’m proud of the players – I thought their effort was magnificent. They did everything to try and get ourselves back in the game and we got caught with two sucker punches.”

The end of the unbeaten run

“We won the last seven games and had a 22-game unbeaten run - you don’t do that unless you’re a good team, so the players deserve a lot of credit for that. “Bohemians winning puts them back on top, but there’s still a lot to play for: there are three games to go, they now have to deal with the situation of being back on top and we just have to get back to winning ways on Friday night.”

Options against Dundalk

“We hope that Twiggy will be in a position to be considered from the start. Paddy Kavanagh is maybe an outside chance, as are Stephen Bradley (hamstring) and Craig Sives (chest infection). “We hope to have players back but we’ve players who took a few knocks against Cork City as well. We’ve a lot of players who’ve played a lot of football, and at this stage of the season I think that maybe starts to catch up with some people. “We don’t want to take a risk with a player, where we’d put him him in a situation where there’s going to be long term any sort of detriment to himself. And secondly, you don’t want to have to take a chance where you have to bring someone off five minutes into the game. All those thing have to analysed equally. “You also don’t want to put someone on the bench and bring them on, and have to take them off again within five minutes. So they’re all the things that we’ll have to consider. We’ll look at the bodies, we’ll see who looks the freshest and we’ll go from there and we’ll be ready for Friday night.”

The back four

“Craig Sives has been a huge player for us, there’s no doubt he’s going to be missed. But the two boys in there against Cork City did well. I thought Darragh Maguire had a very good match, and someone like Darragh can come in and get by, with his experience and natural athleticism, because he’s not played much – I think he’s played 45 mins in the A Championship in the past seven weeks. But we’re in a situation where we had to throw him in because of the injury to Craig Sives. “Aidan played with a knock for most of the game – he got a knock in the first half. These are all things that are sent to test us, but we’ve passed most of the tests that we’ve been set this season, so I’m sure we’ll pass this as well.”

Bouncing back

“One thing I’ll say about this group of players is that any time that’s happened, they’ve reacted favourably. We drew here at home to Dundalk, and certain people reacted as if it was the end of the world, but we subsequently went and won the next seven league games in a row. “We were beaten here by Fingal – again, it was the end of the world, when basically it was the toss of a coin in the FAI Ford Cup. We came back and won games. So every time there’s been that situation this season, the players have reacted well, and come back from it. I’ve no doubt they’ll do the same again.

Looking forward

“It didn’t really matter whether we drew or lost against Cork, with Bohs’ goal difference. We took the decision to go for the game, to keep as many strikers on the pitch as possible, because the reality was that a draw wasn’t going to be a huge amount of use to us, really, because of the goal difference. If Bohemians should slip, we have to be ready to capitalise. So we’ll just focus on winning the last three games.”