Win needed against Pats to save more than Rovers’ season
BACK in December when Sligo Rovers’ Chairman Martin Heraghty and Treasurer David Rowe presented the club’s three year strategic plan to fans, they stressed that a lot of their objectives were based on what happened on the pitch in the coming years.
Nothing was set in stone, but it was based on what the club was hoping the team would achieve for each year of the plan.
It depended on the Rovers team keeping up their end of the bargain. This plan is important. It ensures that we have something to aim for each year in order to grow the club continually, on and off the field.
To get the ball rolling, we need a solid year this year. In reality, Rovers probably do need a European place this year to get the plan off to a good start and to ensure the required funding starts coming in.
Should this ‘ blip’, ( if you like) continue for the duration of the season, that plan goes out the window. It will be increasingly difficult to source the funds for the planned full- time CEO. It will be difficult to keep paying wages when gates inevitably drop and we could need another ‘ Rally Around the Rovers’ style fundraiser to save the club.
It’s hard to know where we go from here. And it’s even harder to stay positive when Rovers have suffered two convincing and comprehensive defeats in their opening two games.
The players were applauded off the field by a few fans on Saturday night. I didn’t begrudge them that. Most players involved on the night tried their hardest – they just couldn’t match Dundalk anywhere across the field. And that’s a Dundalk side without half of their starting eleven.
People keep telling us to remember last year. And remember how we struggled in the first seven games before going on an excellent run of form and finally finishing fifth. I’m conscious of that. But that was a side with slightly more experience than what we have now. Performances earlier last season indicated that there would be better to come, and once fans are given some glimmer of hope they are willing to allow the players and management more time to get things right.
That has been absent this season. We’re only two games in and we’re already writing our own obituaries. It sounds completely daft from the outside I’m sure but having watched pre- season and the games against both Limerick and Dundalk I can completely understand where people are coming from.
Manager Dave Robertson has come in for a huge amount of criticism in the last week or so. People are calling for his head constantly. It’s been painful looking at social media since the season began and it’s something I’ve tried to avoid doing. The abuse aimed at Robertson, and questions over his future are perhaps justified in some cases and in a lot others they are too personal. Whether things work out for Robertson or not, whether you like him or not, you cannot deny that this man is passionate about the job. He is so eager to make it work and so eager to succeed.
I’ve interviewed him every week. I’ve seen how much he was hurting after last week. I see how much it means to him. People are entitled to question his ability or his competence, but there is no questioning his dedication to the job. This obviously means little when you look at the league table. Whether his dedication will ultimately be enough to save our season, I can’t say but having gained the experience of last year and seen what a bad start can do, we all expected more this year.
I don’t have a crystal ball in front of me. But what I do know is that we need more. If this really is a ‘ two year project’ like we were told last year then it had better start coming together pretty soon.
We need our players to stand up and pull together. We need lead- ership on that field and we have got to turn things around before it comes too late.
There has to be a bit of fight. The effort put in by John Russell on Saturday night, despite everything, is something we have got to see across the board. At the minute it’s hard to see where points are going to come from. And it’s hard to see where we’re going to improve because in reality we need an improvement all around the field. But there is still time for things to change.
Robertson is under pressure. The players are under pressure. It’s simply not acceptable for a full- time professional outfit in the League of Ireland to struggle so badly. I think we’re yet to see our best starting eleven, and a lot of the time that will depend on who the opposition is. I personally would have Gary Boylan in that team every week, I don’t care where he plays. We were concerned about losing him to a team across the water a couple of years ago and now he can’t get in the starting eleven. Similarly, I can’t find any justification for Kieran Sadlier not being in the starting team.
There’s no defending Rovers’ performances so far this year. And the table certainly does not lie. A goal difference of - 8 after just two games is frankly disgraceful when you consider that we should be doing better than Galway, Finn Harps, Drogheda and probably St. Patrick’s Athletic.
Something has to change if we are to pick up. That must start this Friday against Pats. We cannot afford to lose this game and Robertson as manager cannot afford a defeat either. We need a good crowd and an even better performance to turn this season around.