Rory Patterson has been ruled out for up to three months after breaking a bone in his ankle  against Bray Wanderers at the weekend.

The Derry City striker lasted just 30 minutes into his comeback before having to be helped from the field by the club’s medical staff. Patterson was taken immediately to hospital where an x-ray showed that a bone had been broken.

On a night when everything which could have gone wrong for Derry did go wrong, Kenny Shiels also lost goalkeeper and captain Gerard Doherty to injury.

“It’s a thigh injury for Gerard because he hit the post when he tried to save the free kick,2 Shiels explained. “We should have had him off. He should have went off, but Gerard being Gerard wanted to play on and he couldn’t get his positon right for the second goal. Normally he would have swept that up. That was a contributing factor.”

“Rory has a bone broken in his ankle which is a huge blow for the player himself as well as us. He has been working so hard in training but it looks like he will miss a few months now because of it. It’s very disappointing all round.”

The bad new comes as City prepare to travel to Turner’s Cross this weekend to take on league leaders Cork City, who have a perfect record of seven wins from seven games so far this season.

Aaron McEneff, frustrated with the last-gasp defeat to Bray Wanderers on Friday night, insisted the team will be going to Cork to make a point.

“We’ve won our first four games, we’ve got beat now, and although people might make a big deal out of it, it’s still early in the season,” he said. “We lost pour first game of the season last year so we’re in a good place. We’re a group that’s really together, on and off the pitch. There are some great players in that changing room, so we’ll just dust ourselves down. Cork will be a tough task but if we go down there with a positive mindset, we should be alright.”

McEneff is still wondering just how City lost Friday night’s game at Maginn Park, a game which the Candy Stripes dominated form start to finish.

“It was a frustrating night for us because I thought that we dominated the game in the first half and the second half,” he agreed. “We had so many chances to put the game to bed and we obviously didn’t take them and we paid for it.

“There were a handful of people that missed chances multiple times. If we take those chances, we win the game and we could have put in six or seven. It’s frustrating but it just shows you that if you don’t take your chances, you don’t win football games.

“It was a shock because we were dominating the game. But after that we continued to dominate. We should have won the game, in my opinion.”

The Bray game was a culmination of a trying two weeks at the club and McEneff admitted that the loss of Ryan McBride had hurt everyone at the club.

“It’s been a tough few weeks for all the boys and all the staff and everyone around the club, even the fans,” he continued. “We had to go in with a mindset tonight that it was just another football match. We had to try and put the occasion at the back of our heads because if you get caught up in these things you don’t perform, and we tried that. I think all the boys did that and we played well, but we just didn’t get the win and that’s obviously the way it was meant to be.”

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