DAN: ALL FOR ONE ...AND ONE FOR AL
Boss Cowley wants tragic hero Mac to be Pompey’s inspiration for play-offs
THE death of Alan McLoughlin last week really hit Portsmouth hard.
Now boss Danny Cowley wants them to do everything they can to honour his memory – starting with a win against Accrington today that would send Pompey into the League One play-offs.
Former Ireland midfielder McLoughlin, who died at the age of just 54 on Tuesday, spent seven seasons at Pompey as a player before returning to the club as a coach in 2011.
Cowley said: “Alan was a wonderful, wonderful footballer and I’ve spoken to some of the boys on the influence he had on their careers.
“You can just sense by the outpouring of grief, just what a brilliant human being he was, it’s just no age to lose someone.
“For us, if we could win and if that helps his family in any way or gives everyone in Portsmouth something to be positive about, then we would love to be able to do that.
“For us, though, life is always so much bigger than football. We just want to send our unconditional love and best wishes to his family – we want them to know that we’re thinking about them.”
After losing someone so closely associated with the club, the enormity of their clash with Accrington has been of very much secondary importance.
But having guided them to the brink of a play-off place with six wins in 11 matches since taking over with his brother Nicky as assistant, back in March, Cowley (above) has already won over supporters who have not set foot in Fratton Park for 14 months.
Helping the club end their wait for a win in the playoffs would see him assume cult status for a set of fans who have witnessed pretty much everything that football has to offer over the past two decades.
Cowley added: “I’ve spent my whole life being an underdog so I was actually really pleased when I heard that statistic.
“I thought, wow, that means we can be the underdog in the playoffs, I’ve got the narrative all set up and ready to go.
“These stats are there to be broken but first, we know what we have to do on Sunday.”
With Charlton and Oxford breathing down their neck, Cowley’s side know any slip-up will be costly.
After being brought in on an interim basis until the end of the season, it is thought Pompey will look to make Cowley’s time at Fratton Park a more permanent arrangement regardless of today’s result.
Despite everything thrown at him in the past two months, Cowley has loved every minute of it.
“It’s been brilliant,” he said. “It’s been a great challenge, it’s never straightforward, it’s never easy and we’ve had a lot go against us.
“It has been brilliant to get to know the people – we’ve been made to feel so welcome.”