'Harsh words' lift Institute players ahead of another big game

Brian Donaghey admits that he and his team shared some harsh words with each other before finally breaking an 11-game winless run with victory over Annagh United last week.

To say the 2-0 win at the Brandywell last Saturday was a relief would be an understatement, with the three points massive in the context of ‘Stute’s season. Since beating H&W Welders back in November, ‘Stute’s form plummeted off a cliff, so much so that they are now looking nervously over their shoulders at the relegation places.

They face Dergview on Saturday in the proverbial ‘six-pointer’ with both teams struggling too close to the edge, but Donaghey believes that the win over Annagh could have come just at the right time.

“It’s a huge match,” he agreed. “I don’t think we covered ourselves in too much glory the last time we were up there at Darragh Park, so I think probably we owe them one. But if we get a similar type of performance – losing becomes a habit and winning becomes a habit – they didn’t get too down. I’ve been delighted with them the last 10 days.

“I’ve been harsh with them behind closed doors and that will stay there, but I think they realised themselves that ‘We’re better than this. We should be sitting comfortably mid-table’. There’s the amount of points we have given away from winning positions and then there’s the sloppy goals, which kill you.

“I’ve said to them, it means nothing unless we go and try and put a run together and get as safe as possible as quick as possible, and that’s the aim.”

While there has been some personnel changes in recent months, Donaghey still can’t believe his team have struggled so badly, insisting they are a better team than their form suggests.

“If you had told me at the start of the season that we would go 10 games without winning I wouldn’t have believed you, I definitely wouldn’t have,” he admitted. “But it happened and we said we are the only people who can dig ourselves out of this. When we were very comfortable for four or five weeks, but then you are looking behind you for the first time, it’s not a very nice feeling.

“We had a good chat about it and we realised that we all just have to man up here and just work harder and go back to what we were doing well and results will come. We never lost faith in them and they never lost faith in us either.

“There’s still a long way to go and there’s still 10 games to go and there will still be a lot of twists and turns, but I would love to be up the table looking down and going ‘I don’t really care what happens’. But we’ve dragged ourselves into a wee four team mini-league at the moment so we have to put a number of results together and get away from that? We’ll see.”

Struggled

Recent results have also taken a toll on Donaghey on a personal level, who admits he was hurt by the recent Newington defeat in particular.

“It has been hard, moreso after the Newington game, which really hurt me,” he said. I’ve only had that feeling once before and that was against Queen’s, this time last year. There were five or six games to go and they beat us 1-0, and they beat us well 1-0. I text the Chairman and told him ‘This is the worst I’ve felt since the Queen’s game’, but on that occasion we went then and won five out of six and if we can do anything similar to that, I would bite your hand off.

“We’re not going to get carried away, but we’re definitely capable of giving everyone a game in this league. Everything is based on solid foundations and when you have your two screening midfielders playing the way they did, and when you have your back four heading and kicking the ball as if their lives depend on it, and if you have your front men chasing every ball, it’s a simple game. Sometimes teams overcomplicate it, but if you’re giving that work ethic week in and week out, we’ll win more games than we’ll lose.”