Roddy embarrassed after defeat

In fairness the right-back along with Declan McKeever were the only two players who could hold their head up after the terrible 3-0 defeat at the Showgrounds, also conceded he was embarrassed to travel home with the ’Stute supporters and committee members after their awful result.

“It was no where near good enough,” insisted Roddy.

“After keeping a clean-sheet against Banbridge Town in our last game, stupid mistakes again cost us.

“There was goalkeeping mistakes, defensive mistakes, not winning the first headers and first tackles and it took us until the start of the second half to get going and that was after we got a bollocking at half-time.

“In fairness I think we did play well for around 30 minutes of the second half, but after drawing level and with 15 minutes to go we switched off and conceded a goal then a few minutes later we switched off again and conceded a third goal, in the space of around three minutes we were 3-1 down.

“I was embarrassed to have had to get onto a bus with supporters who paid money to come the whole way down to Newry to watch Institute and we didn’t start playing for them until after half-time,” he said.

The ex-Finn Harps man also believes that the young team tag isn’t an excuse particularly this season.

“We have players who played all year and have vast amounts of experience, so we aren’t a young team anymore, I think we have to actually want it more,” he admitted.

“We have to win the battles, win the tackles, which some weeks we do but for some reason at Newry I don’t know, to be honest I’m disgusted with not just the result, but the performance, as it seems like we haven’t learned anything from last season.”

On the plus side the Waterside men have a game tomorrow night at Dergview and a chance to bounce back, however Roddy feels if the management team decide to make a number of changes, to the side, then no one in the dressing room can complain.

“No one can have any complaints what’s so ever if the coaching staff makes a host of changes, I think two or three players were signalled out after the game in the dressing room who played above average and you can’t have that.

“You really can’t have three players out of 11 who are trying to pull eight other people with you, everyone has to be in it together. You need at least seven or eight players performing at their maximum every week, if you want to get anything out of a game and on Saturday it was no were near good enough.”

The 27-year-old knew after Saturday’s match what training was going to be like this week, but he wants that enthusiasm brought onto the pitch tomorrow evening.

“We train with aggression and the tackles that go in during training are amazing, but I didn’t see one tackle on Saturday, but when I did see a tackle it was from one of the Newry players. I know what training will be like this week, it will be intense, tough and a good session, but sure there is no point doing that in training if you don’t bring it into a match.

“So we have to find that fine line where what we do in training we bring it onto a match, starting with Dergview on Thursday night.

“We spoke after the game on Saturday about Newry having lost two-in-a-row before they played us and they bounced back, now it’s up to us to bounce back, but Dergview will be full of confidence after winning on Saturday and they are going to put it up to us, which they did last year, so we are going to have to come out of the blocks quickly.

“We can’t wait another 45 minutes again on Thursday night to get started.”