For many, Dundalk’s defeat in Waterford at the weekend was a case of déjà vu, as it mirrored the club’s loss in Cobh following the midseason break twelve months ago. That reversal ignited Dundalk’s demise, as they went on to finish a distant third in the promotion race, having led the table for the opening 22 weeks of the campaign. However, as his stunned troops struggled to deal with the pain of Friday’s loss in the RSC, Lilywhites manager John Gill insisted that there will be no further sense of déjà vu surrounding Oriel Park in the coming months.

“This team won’t fall away - there’s too many good players here,” Gill declared to dundalkfc.com. “There’s no fear of that happening, and it won’t happen. But we’ve got to start learning lessons quickly that when you have teams on the rack, you must punish them. I said to Gerry Scully, ‘at times, that was the best display of the season’. But, again, you get nothing for it, you get no points for it, and moral victories, unfortunately, at this stage of the season, aren’t worth a curse to us.

“If I was talking here, and we were absolutely battered and we were terrible, I actually wouldn’t be as disappointed as I am now. When you dominate a game from the first minute to the 94th minute and you give away a goal like that, it’s difficult to take. I’m devastated. I’m devastated for the players, but, in saying that, I’m annoyed as well, because we should have the concentration levels and the focus to see out a game.

“I would have even been disappointed with a point, to be honest, with the way we dominated the game, but at least you come away with a clean-sheet. Again, that’s Shels and Waterford, where we’ve gone to their places and dominated games. The difference against Shels was that we took our chances, and this is what happens when you don’t take your chances.

“You’ll get a lot of sceptics now, who weren’t at the game, saying this and that. The people who were here saw with their own eyes the way that we played and the way that we dominated the game. It’s very, very disappointing. I’m disappointed for the supporters, and I’m disappointed for the players, to a certain extent. I said to them at half-time, ‘you’ve got these on the ropes, and what good teams do now is, they put teams away, but remember, it only takes a second to score a goal’. People may say I’m being a prophet, but that’s what happens.

“I’m devastated, but I have to take a positive out of the performance. But, at this stage of the season, you can’t just have performances. You need results, and you have to match the two. That is definitely three points lost tonight, and it would have been two points lost had we drawn the game.”