‘We’ve got to keep
HE may not want the praise but Graham Kelly deserves it after summoning two excellent performances from Bray Wanderers - one of which yielded three points.
On both Friday and Monday, the caretaker manager passed all credit onto the players.
They may be the ones out on the pitch but it was his influence that sparked them into life and there were beaming smiles all round at the Carlisle Grounds following the 1-0 success over Shamrock Rovers.
“It was a fantastic performance from the lads”, Kelly beamed. “They worked really hard again today and they put an enormous shift in.
“The two-day recovery for us is really tough as a part-time club - it’s really tough on the lads. They’ve given 110% today and we can’t ask for any more than that.
“We look at the squad and we look at the attitude of the players and we think we have enough there to keep us up and we’ve just got to keep working hard and try to keep picking up points.
Much of the hype surrounded Rovers’ third defeat in a row but Kelly cared little for that statistic.
“It was really about us tonight. We took the positives from Friday night against Dundalk and we knew we had to build on that. We knew we needed the same workrate. The conditions made it very difficult for both teams but we knew that if we put the effort in that we would create chances with the players we have. Luckily enough, we got the goal.”
Ronan Coughlan was the man that got the goal with an ice cool finish but it would have mattered little had Aaron Dillon not done the business between the sticks too. Kelly was bursting with pride for both.
“Ronan is fantastic. His technical ability is really, really good. He’s came in during the winter before pre-season and he worked really hard and he got his chance and then he lost a bit of form but he’s come back in today and he’s shown what he can do.
“Aaron is only young - people don’t realise that. Aaron’s only gone 21 so for a goalkeeper to come into this league that young and take a few heavy defeats - it’s hard on a kid. He’s worked hard, he works really hard in training with Ian Fowler (goalkeeping coach) and I’m delighted for him tonight to get that clean sheet.”
Dillon will hope to add a third clean sheet to his collection on Friday when Wanderers travel to the RSC to take on unexpected title hopefuls Waterford. Bray will be buoyed by Waterford’s extremely long suspension list but Kelly will be focussing on