General
- Thursday June 19th, 2025 @ 15:00
Kenny: "Now We Need To Show Strength In Adversity"
St Patrick's Athletic Manager Stephen Kenny says his side must show "strength in adversity" and has called on the players staff and supporters to "rally around each other" ahead of another big weekend in the League of Ireland.
Following a scoreless draw against Drogheda United last Friday and a narrow 1-0 defeat vs Shelbourne at Richmond Park on Monday, The Saints face three big games in a week, beginning with a trip to face Galway United on Friday before hosting Derry City on Monday and then going to Cork's Turners Cross next Friday.
St Pat's remain 4th in the Premier Division and will be aiming to pick up a big three points at Eamonn Deacy Park on Friday.
Reacting to the Drogheda draw and Shelbourne defeat, the St Pat's boss is hoping for a positive performance from his side, backed by a supportive away end in Galway:
"It would have been our objective to take six points from the two home games last weekend, or four points at least, it was our desire to do that but we got just one point which was disappointing.
Six points would have put us in a strong position and we could have achieved that. We missed a penalty against Drogheda United and hit the post, a victory in that game would have been a good boost heading into the Shelbourne game so we are disappointed with ourselves."
With 26 goals, The Saints remain the second-top scorers in the Premier Division, and a win on Friday could see the Inchicore side move to 2nd in the table. Kenny is hopeful they'll find their form in front of goal again this weekend.
"We obviously haven't scored in our last two games which is not like us, especially at home. Scoring goals has not been a problem for us, we've shown a capacity to score.
We're disappointed to lose our unbeaten run at home, having not lost for more than a year. I feel that we deserved more than we got against Shelbourne.
We weren't happy with our first-half display, we had too many misplaced passes, looked edgy and didn't play with much confidence.
We were much better in the second half, overall Shelbourne's XG was 0.21 and their winner was a deflected shot. We didn't concede any chances in the game bar the goal, but we didn't take our our chances , on another night we could had got a couple of goals but we didn't."
A busy period awaits for The Saints, with League matches against Galway United, Derry City and Cork City to come in the next week, before a home Dublin derby against Bohemians in front of the Virgin Media TV cameras, attention will then turn to the UEFA Conference League 1st Qualifying round against FC Hegelmann of Lithuania.
The Manager has been outlining a big few weeks ahead, and has called on players, staff and supporters to stick together.
"We had a good win in Sligo before the break and I feel the players trained very well after a few days off. They came back early and we were hoping to hit the ground running again.
We've been dealing with some injury issues in the midfield with Chris Forrester and Romal Palmer and we've had to manage Mason Melia with the injury he picked up during the break, nevertheless we still have enough to get results and we didn't find a way to break the deadlock and unlock deep defences over the weekend.
It is a busy period for us now, with our 3rd game in 7 days against Galway away, following by Derry City and Cork City and then Bohemians.
We've got to rally around, everyone, the players, the staff, and the supporters to get behind each other and the team.
It will be difficult game in Galway, we've got to go down there and try to get a big result. We are capable of getting two results (on Friday and Monday) and we've got to aspire to do that.
Overall, our away results haven't been great but we have had good victories in Waterford, Cork and Sligo and we've got to try to replicate that in Galway. Nobody will give us anything, we've got to fight for the right to earn a result.
Galway will really test us to us physically and we have to be able to deal with that and put in a strong performance. Everyone is disappointed that we didn't take more from last week, we came out with a point, it's put us on the back foot.
That means now is the time for us to show our strength in adversity. When I was U21 manager of St Pat's many many years ago in my first ever coaching job, the slogan around the club crest at the time was Ni Neart Go Cur Le Cheile, meaning "There's No Strength Without Unity" and that is still synonymous with the club now and that's an important thing for us to remember.
We've got our big European games to come up and a tough draw and we look forward to that in a few weeks. For now, we've got to rally around each other, and try to get though a big four days. If the 2nd half of the Shelbourne game is a template of what we can that can give us optimism. Our quality of a play was to a high level, we played the whole game in their half, but we've got to aspire to have that for 90 minutes, starting in Galway tomorrow."
