Derry City's Eoin Toal felt game plan against Shamrock Rovers was working

The former Northern Ireland international keeper got a finger tip to push Ciaron Harkin’s initial header onto the bar, before racing across his goal-line to keep out Toal’s close range follow-up effort.

“Yeah, I thought it was in,” insisted the centre-back, “I just saw the open goal and it was one of those ones that, because of the dry pitch, the ball bounced really slow and I tried to put as much as I could on it. I don’t even know how he (Mannus) came across so quickly. I just don’t how it didn’t go in. On another day, they go in but I’ll take it on the chin and move on.

“I thought I had enough pace on my header to get it into the net but he just came across and made a great save and, to be honest, I don’t know what else I can say about it.”

The Armagh man revealed that the Candy Stripes dressing room was in a sombre mood after the narrow loss to Stephen Bradley’s men, especially after they had put in such a shift.

“We’re all disappointed in the dressing room. I’m absolutely gutted because I thought we defended excellently,” added Toal.

“Everyone on the pitch worked their socks off and it was just two silly mistakes that just cost us at the end up.

“I thought we were very comfortable in the game. Peter (Cherrie) didn’t have many saves to make and because of that I’m just gutted with the defeat.”

The Brandywell club’s game plan was too stay compact in defence and hit the Hoops on the break and while they didn’t hurt Rovers enough in the first half, they were leading at the break thanks to Walter Figueira’s fortunate strike which had Toal believing their game plan would be enough to secure the win.

However, as the Dubliners made five changes to their starting 11 with Ireland international Graham Burke and Ireland U21 winger Neil Farrugia coming off the bench, they slowly started to put the home side under pressure and two goals in the space of four minutes, the first an unfortunate own goal from Colm Horgan before Roberto Lopes’ 81st minute strike sealed the points, much to the Northern Ireland U21 international’s annoyance.

“I thought our game plan was working well,” he confirmed.

“Then, when we got the goal and as time went on, they were kind of playing in front of us but, as everyone knows, Rovers are a top side and have won every game this season, but I thought on another day, with a bit more luck, we might have got a positive result.

“When you can make five changes, those are five men coming on fresh and ready to go, it’s obviously going to be tough but to be fair, we made some quality substitutions as well and that did help and strengthen us.”

The centre-back, who was awarded the SSE Airtricity ‘Man of the Match’ on Sunday, wants the squad to dust themselves down and get ready for another tough test at Shelbourne this Saturday.

“We can’t dwell on the result, we just have to get going again for Saturday against Shelbourne,” he said.

“The games are coming thick and fast. We have another game on Saturday and we all have to look forward to it, take every game as it comes and as I said we just need to all get going again on Tuesday and look forward to the Shelbourne game.”

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A message from the Editor

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide high-quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the highest standards in the world.

The dramatic events of 2020 are having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers and consequently the advertising that we receive.

We are now more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news by buying a copy of our newspaper.

Thank you