Dundalk fell to their first defeat of pre-season on Thursday night, however, after losing out to Premier Division side Bray Wanderers, manager John Gill was focussing on the positives, despite admitting that his team put in a below-par performance. Giving his reaction to the game to dundalkfc.com afterwards, Gill said: “We were a bit flat tonight I thought. I thought we were very leggy tonight, but we’ve worked really hard.
 
“We made a lot of changes, but I thought the plusses tonight were Ben Whelehan, getting forty-five minutes, young Billy Smith coming on, getting ten minutes, and Stefan McKevitt playing the full ninety. We were a little bit disjointed tonight - we had to make a lot of changes positionally. I had to freshen things up, I had to give guys a rest and take guys off at half-time, but that game is worth three training sessions - ask any player. Again, they were the better side. On Tuesday, we were excellent, last Thursday, we were excellent, but you’ve got to try players out. We’re evolving as a group, so overall, I’m very, very happy.
 
“I thought we were flat tonight - we were poor. Let’s make no bones about it. But you’ve got to consider the team that we sent out. You should always be up for a game, but in fairness - and I’m not trying to make excuses - the facts are that we played last Thursday, on Saturday they were in the gym doing a spinning class, on Sunday they were up the hills in the Phoenix Park, they played Tuesday and they played tonight. I probably asked them to go to the well one maybe too many times. We were due to do a double weekend this weekend, but I’m going to give them Sunday off to rest up. We’ll come back in Tuesday, they’ll be fresh and rested, we’ll work on some offensive stuff for the Rovers game, and it’ll be a different side we’ll have out for that - it’ll be more like ourselves. But again, I can’t fault the effort.
 
“If you look at it there, four local lads under the age of 20 from the academy here finished the game tonight, which is a brilliant plus. People say ‘you don’t give locals a chance’ - I’ll play locals if they have the same attitude as those four guys. They’ve got a great attitude, the four of them - they’re a credit to Tommy Connolly, Stephen Carragher, Cronin McCabe, and John Whyte. We’ll bring them along slowly. The problem is, you’ll probably have a load of people saying to rush them through because of the fact that they’re local. I’m not going to do that - I don’t think it’s fair. We’ll take young Billy into training with us next Tuesday, along with young Shane Greene from the Youth team, and that’s what I want to do. I did it with Tiarnàn two years ago, and he has come on no end.”