Dundalk head coach Stephen O’Donnell felt that his side lacked a ‘killer instinct’ in the 2-1 defeat against St Patrick’s Athletic on Friday night.
The teams went in level at the break after Ryan O’Kane’s goal, his first at Casey’s Field, cancelled out Chris Forrester’s opener but Adam O’Reilly’s 93rd-minute effort ended Dundalk’s unbeaten home run to sent the visiting supporters wild.
The result moves Pat’s just a single point behind Dundalk with just four games to play and speaking afterwards, O’Donnell couldn’t hide his frustration.
On the result…
“When you concede with the last kick of the game it is disappointing. St Pat’s are direct, they get bodies up against you, and they try to hit their wing backs but I’m just disappointed we didn’t punish them more on turnovers and when we were in possession, especially as the game wore on. We got into dangerous areas a lot but we lacked a little bit of a killer instinct.”
On the performance
“I wanted to win the game. Obviously, I would rather have drawn it than lose it but I wanted us to show more and punish them more. They empty the pitch and I think we could have done much better in possession. The work rate and effort was there, as it always is, but we could have put them to the sword more. We gave up a sloppy goal but in general play, I don’t think they had many chances and even in the second half, bar a few set pieces, they didn’t really have too much.”
On getting better…
“For where we want to go, we have to do more. In isolation, it wasn’t a bad performance, but from my expectations, and where I want this club to go, we need to be better at punishing teams. We’ll get there.”
On Greg Sloggett’s injury…
“He has a little bit of a muscle injury. He felt good and the scan on his injury last week came back clear but there is obviously a little bit of a weakness there. He felt good in the warm-up and the first 20 minutes but he made a little stride and he just felt something. We’ll see where we are at with that over the weekend. We’re down a lot of bodies, there’s no denying that, a lot of big players from a personnel and quality standpoint, but that’s the way it is. It’s next man up, that’s what we’ve preached all year and it’ll be the same again next week.”
On the league table…
“My frustration is totally about the result. It’s not on anything to do with the league table. I’m not concerned about the run-in. We take every game as it comes. My frustration is that we didn’t put them to the sword. We had some good passages and showed a bit of courage when we got on it but I would have liked to have seen us be a bit more clinical. We just have to go again now and get ready for Finn Harps next week.”
