Front man Junior Ogedi-Uzokwe hoping to end Derry City's shocking Player of the Month winless run

Striker Junior Ogedi-Uzokwe admits he would love to become the first Derry City to win the Player of the Month award since Barry McNamee last picked up the accolade way back in April 2013.
Junior Ogedi-Uzokwe has scored six goals in Derry City's last six games.Junior Ogedi-Uzokwe has scored six goals in Derry City's last six games.
Junior Ogedi-Uzokwe has scored six goals in Derry City's last six games.

The Londoner has been nominated for June’s prize, after he netted four goals last month, but he's up against tough opponents in Bohemians Danny Mandroiu, Dundalk pair Sean Gannon and John Mountney, Shelbourne striker Ciaran Kilduff and St Patrick's Athletic defender Ciaran Kelly and the winner will be announced on Tuesday.

“Obviously I would love to win it, but to be honest it has been the hard work from the whole team in general, that has meant I have got nominated,” he insisted.

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“Hopefully I do win it, but if I don’t, I’ll just keep working hard and who knows what can happen in the future.”

The 25-year-old, who has now scored six goals in Derry’s last six games, admitted that no one in the Brandywell team let their heads drop after Pat Hoban’s 90th minute goal look like being the winner for champions Dundalk, on Friday.

He also conceded that he felt the Candy Stripes weren't at their best but he was over the moon to get the equaliser deep in stoppage time.

“I’m delighted to score and happy that we got a point out of that, because I think they scored in the 90th minute, so I thought the game was done, but thankfully we got one back and got a draw,” he added.

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“I believe we could have done a lot better but I’m happy to get a point. No one gave up when they scored in stoppage time, as the final whistle wasn’t blown, so we are never going to give up and we just kept going and thankfully we got the reward for it.”

This Friday, Declan Devine’s side host UCD, who themselves got a surprise win over Finn Harps, their first after losing 12 games in a row and because of that Ogedi-Uzokwe believes the Students will be looking for another positive result this week.

“Hopefully we can now start adding more wins instead of draws, but we know it’s going to be hard against UCD,” he said.

“We know ourselves that we can play a lot better than what we did tonight (against Dundalk) and if we do play, with the quality we have, we should be getting more wins than we are currently getting, but it was still very good to get a last minute draw against the champions.

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“UCD won on Friday and they will gain confidence from that, but we see it as another game that we have to go out there and try to win it, especially as it's in front of our own fans. We have to win the games like that and I'm looking forward to it.”