BRAD FIRES A SHAMROCKET
Rovers boss warns his players about being complacent
SHAMROCK ROVERS boss Stephen Bradley has pointed out the cost of complacency to his champions after they blew a derby lead at St Pat’s.
And he has hammered home the message that rivals are lining up to pounce if his players “don’t engage their brains”.
Rovers were good value for a 1-0 half-time lead at Richmond Park on Friday, Darragh Nugent heading home a fourth-minute opener. Dylan Watts also hit the bar and Graham Burke curled wide while Rovers felt Josh Honohan should have been awarded a second-half penalty.
But the Saints came roaring back and scored two goals in two minutes from skipper Joe Redmond and Alex Nolan to win the game.
Bradley was livid at what he feels were a catalogue of errors from his players in the build-up to both goals.
“If you don’t deploy your brain for 90 minutes in any league – especially this league – you don’t win games,” he said. “For 45 minutes we were as good as anything you will see and the last 25 minutes were really good.
“But for that little period in between, we came away from it and if you do that in any game of football you’re going to get punished and you don’t deserve to win games.
“Maybe we got too complacent and felt everything we were working on was working and maybe we thought in the second half it would just happen. But in any game of football it never just happens, you have to make it happen and for those first 15 minutes of the second half we were miles away from making it happen.”
Nolan’s winner came after he was teed up by Brandon Kavanagh who had latched onto a poorly executed clearance from Rovers goalkeeper Leon Pohls.
But Bradley feels it is finger pointing to blame the German No.1 and added: “The way he plays, that’s one of his biggest attributes.”