General
- Saturday February 25th, 2017 @ 15:04
"Trust Me, We'll Recover" - Buckley On Bray Defeat
St Patrick's Athletic lost their opening game of the SSE Airtricity Premier Division season on Friday night.
Goals from Anto Flood and Gary McCabe were enough to see Bray Wanderers to the three points, despite Graham Kelly getting a late goal back.
The Saints had two second half goal disallowed and ended the match with nine men after Aidan Keena and Darren Dennehy were sent off.
Liam Buckley and his team will quickly turn their attention to next Friday's game away to Drogheda United.
The disappointed Manager spoke to stpatsfc.com after the game.
"It was a poor match. Bray played quite direct and caused us some trouble and we just didn't play well, I felt the game passed us by at times although we made a decent push at the end to get the equaliser at 2-1.
We also had a couple of goals disallowed but overall we'd be very disappointed with how we played and we need to improve."
Flood gave Bray the lead after a quick counter attack by winger Dylan Connolly in the 22nd minute before McCabe made it 2-0 with a tidy finish after 65 minutes.
Graham Kelly and Conan Byrne both had goals disallowed either side of Kelly's equaliser in the 85th minute.
Buckley think Kelly's disallowed strike should have been given as a goal
"It didn't look like a foul to me, Aidan went in fairly for the ball, he had to go in for it and I didn't think he fouled, it broke to Graham and he scored. Conan also had the ball in the net, I haven't had a chance to see the video yet, but if he was offside, the referees got that one right."
Chances were at a premium at Richmond
"Our attacking players rely on the whole team to play well in terms of getting chances in the box and it just didn't happen last night. We didn't get our patterns right, didn't get the ball wide which meant we didn't create too many chances. We've got a bit of work to do heading into a tough game in Drogheda next week but we'll definitely be better for that game."
"There are lots of areas we need to improve from a team point of view and I know the boys will do better next week. We've had a very good pre season, the lads looked really fit last night and we'll be focused from training on Sunday on a win next Friday in Drogheda. We'll have a look at the video and make a plan to improve."
Buckley says his team will be going to United Park to pick up three points
"Trust me, we'll recover, we've got a squad a players here who are very hungry and good in all areas.
We'll obviously have to make a couple of changes given the red cards, this was the first game of the season, we're disappointed with how we performed and the result but we plan to put that right next week."
Kick off at United Park is at 7.45pm.
