Penalty miss hurts more when you don’t win
There are obviously positives to take from the game, as we looked very solid at the back and got our first clean sheet of the season. At the other end of the pitch, it was a night to forget, but hopefully that was just a one-off for us.
Just after half-time, we were awarded a penalty, and I stepped up to take it. I was facing my old teammate, Sam Sargeant, who was in the goal for Sligo, and he is a goalkeeper that I have taken many penalties against before.
Unfortunately for me, I sent him the wrong way, but the penalty came back off the crossbar and out to safety. On the pitch, of course, you have to put that disappointment to one side straight away while the game is ongoing, but once the final whistle went and we had only drawn, that is when the penalty miss hurt the most.
I didn’t get much sleep Friday night as I replayed the incident over and over in my mind, going through all the other outcomes and the thought process of why I went higher than I normally would.
Coming off the pitch and in the dressing room, it felt like we had lost the game and understandably so, but as I said, there were plenty of positives, and now we have to move on to the next game, and the preparations for the away trip to Derry have already begun.
They are a side that will want to challenge for the league title at the end of the season. They have spent heavily in the off-season and recruited some very good players to add to their talented squad, most notably Irish international centurion James McClean.
He is obviously a brilliant player and has had a great career, so we will need to look after him on the night. He has been playing in the unusual position of centre midfield so far for Derry this season, but he is a player who can certainly excel playing there.
One thing that everyone knows about James is how hard he works on and off the pitch, with his fitness levels through the roof. He is at his hometown club now and will be desperate to win a league title with them.
I was sent a picture over the weekend of James and me playing against each other in the Premier Division back in 2009, when I was at Shamrock Rovers, so it will be great to do battle with him again.
In Derry’s opening three games of the season, they have had a win, a loss and a draw, which they most likely won’t be too pleased with because their opening three games have all been at home because of the work they are going to be doing on their pitch in the summer time. There have been lots of new signings at the club, though, and it takes time for players to gel, but hopefully they will take another week or two for us. They did win the Presidents Cup (our version of the Community Shield) when they went to Tallaght Stadium and beat Shamrock Rovers on their home patch.
The Ryan McBride Brandywell is a very tough place to go to, and we know only too well about that. Last season, we won once and lost once there, but the loss was a heavy 7-2 defeat when it felt like everything Derry tried to do on the night they were so in sync with each other that it came off and punished us. Michael Duffy, who won player of the year in the league last season, was sensational on the night, but if we look back at last year, we did beat them in the early stages of the season in Derry, and it was a deserved win for us on the night.
