Derry City assistant boss Paddy McLaughlin insists Brandywell form isn't an issue

Derry City players will be aiming to change their Brandywell fortunes around going into tomorrow evening's game against St Patrick's Athletic.

City have won only once at the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium this season but have secured four victories on the road. However, new assistant manager McLaughlin insists he isn’t concerned and expects an upturn sooner rather than later.

“I think people are making more of the home form than they actually should be,” he insisted. “We’ve only played five games and two of the draws were against two really good sides in Dundalk and Sligo.”

“The surface that we play on is what it is. Yes, we do seem to play better football on grass and we have been getting better results away, but we’ll deal with the pitch as it comes. We play on it regularly and we train on it as much as we can and those sessions go well on it.

“Once we get a string of good performances and good results on it, that will put it to bed, and it’s important for us to start that straight away. Hopefully that will happen on Friday night.”

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McLaughlin said last week’s impressive win at Cork City had put a spring in everyone’s step once again after a frustrating period.

“Training has gone well. The boys have trained really well. Obviously that’s coming on the back of a good performance and good result down in Cork,” he added.

“It was good to get back on the pitch again and prepare for a tough few games coming up, starting with St Pat’s.

“To be honest they’re all tough matches in this league. As you can see with the results week to week, it’s very competitive and very equal right throughout the league and now we now have two tough games back to back.

“But we're going into them off the back of a good result and a good week’s training, so we're looking forward to it and we're well prepared for it.”

The Creggan man confirmed that Cameron Dummigan is close to making a return to first team action.

“I’m not sure if anyone is going to be fit enough to be in the starting 11 on Friday, but we might have one or two back involved in the squad at the very least,” McLaughlin explained.

“A couple of boys have got another week under their belt. Cameron Dummigan is a week closer, so we’ll hopefully get more boys back sooner rather than later.”