“There’s no way that they were better than us” – Coleman
Waterford FC manager John Coleman ahead of the game against Cork City.
Waterford FC manager John Coleman believed that his side were the better team in defeat to Cork City in the SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division at Turner’s Cross, putting the loss down to a host of missed chances and a man of the match performance from keeper Conor Brann.
Speaking after the game, Coleman said: “We didn’t get the result, but we had 24 shots on the Cork City goal with 12 of them on target. I think young Murray got man of the match for them, but there was only one man of the match and that was their goalkeeper.
“I disagree with you that we didn’t get the performance. We were guilty of giving them a goal – the second one. The first one right on half-time, the ball could fall to anyone, but he has hit it well and it’s a good volley.
“We had five of them shots, and their keeper has made five world class saves. We come in at half-time losing 1-0 when they’ve had one shot on our goal. We’ve had ten, five on their goal.
“In the second-half, Sam (Glenfield) doesn’t mean to do it but he does. It’s a mistake. Now we capitalised on their mistake in the first-half, and Conan (Noonan) missed as the keeper saved it. They capitalised on Sam’s mistake, and they bury it.
“It becomes like a game of basketball then. Stevie makes two or three great saves, but it would have put an awkward slant on it because there was no way they were better than us tonight. The fact is they’ve scored more than us.
“We get back on top and with 20 minutes to go, we have the leading goalscorer in the league has the easiest chance of the night. Keeper makes a good save, but we’ve got to be more clinical and we can’t put the rebound in either.
“They’re the moments in the game. We’ve made a howler of a mistake to give them the second goal, and then we’ve missed an absolute sitter. If you do that, you can say that you don’t deserve to win a game, but the effort was there from the players. We’ve kept going right till the end.”
After receiving some stick from the supporters at the end of the game, Coleman said: “I don’t like anyone booing a team. I know supporters are disgruntled but it doesn’t do anyone any good. I know that we’re in a bit of a slump now. We are where we are, but when you’re going to through hell, you’ve got to keep going.
“You’ve got to get out the other side. We’ve got to fight and we’ve got to work hard for the next three weeks. That’s got to be reflected in training. We’ve got to be like rabbit dogs again when our chances comes around to play again in three weeks’ time.
“There’s going to be a lot of tough games between now and the end of the season and we’ve got to be there to be counted. The fans are disgruntled at the end of the game tonight, and I get that because they want to see you win. They don’t want to see you lose particularly in a derby two weeks running.
“We were much better than we’ve been in the last two games tonight. You’ve to take into account that we’ve got Tommy Lonergan sick so he couldn’t come on. We’ve lost Boyler in the warm-up. We’ve got Josh (Miles) and Jesse (Dempsey) who haven’t played much football so we’re not expecting them to do the trip.
“If one of our chances go in before they score, we go onto win that game three nil. That’s football for you and if you’re not prepared to accept that it can be disappointing at times, don’t be involved in it.”
Coleman added: “We came here to win the game tonight and that reflected on the amount of shots that we had in the game. We need to be more ruthless in front of goal. We have to pass the ball better and we’ve got to continue to create chances.
“There is no way in any way, shape or form that we deserved to lose that game tonight. You might get a bias Cork fan, who might see the couple of saves that Stevie made in the second-half as validating fact that they should have won the game. You might see our fans just seen that we’ve lost the game and not realising that their keeper was man of the match. He has made four great saves and that’s four golden opportunities that we had to score.
“They were going in against Galway and nobody was moaning then. That’s the nature of football and I’ve been around the game long enough to know that you’ve got to deal with disappointment. The minute you don’t deal with disappointment, you may as well as pack in.”
