Reaction

In the Ladbrokes Championship Play-Off Final 1st Leg played at The Indodrill Stadium on Wednesday night, “The Wasps” were frustrated and disappointed with the result, going down 1-0 to a spectacular winner which gave the visitors, Dumbarton, something to hang onto which the defended for their life.

jim goodwin after 1st leg advantage goes to dumbarton

Frustrated with the result tonight, would be the best word to sum up my feelings after the match, the boys did everything that we has asked of them, to go and play football, play the ball out from the back, play through the different thirds of the pitch we did all that and in the opening five minutes we were camped in the Dumbarton half and they get a breakaway and their first shot of the game goes in the top corner, so it was hard to take at the time but the reaction of the players was excellent. They kept on doing the right things, they never panicked and were very patient in the build up, we just couldn’t break them down, and that was the most frustrating thing about it.

Dumbarton are very good at being compact, sitting deep and defending the box well and I thought they done that well, it is difficult we just need to keep going and “Keep Believing” that we can get back in the game, we will go to Dumbarton with the same mindset that we will still try to play football the way we think it should be played and hopefully get a break of the ball in the box because we had some good opportunities tonight – Jordan Kirkpatrick forced their keeper to make a great save in the first half when he tips to ball onto the post and later Callum Smith  had two or three good opportunities, one on one chances where I have to give credit to Craig Barr who slipped back in and got a very good block and then the second one the keeper makes a good save so on another night we would have scored at least one goal but unfortunately tonight we couldn’t quite do that.

At the goal the TV evidence suggests the ball went out of play but I was right there and it was an obvious decision in my opinion, I’m not one for publically disagreeing with referees but it is difficult when you have the fourth official standing in the same position as me, in fairness to the linesman, I think “Flanny” is in the way of the ball but it was clearly out of play and its one of these ones if you are unsure you go the way of the defender but six or seven seconds after that the ball drops to Stuart Carswell who was an ex teammate of mine, I know I will not hear the end of that one, but I think he has two shots in his whole career and has two goals, so it’s incredible  it was a hell of a strike but that’s how football goes – sometimes you are better being lucky that good.

Tonight I just wanted the lads to go out and play the way they had all season, I would like to see the possession stats and shots on goal, I can’t remember Neil Parry having much to do and I think their goalkeeper was the busier of the two keepers, I think we dominated possession of the ball I think in was 70/30 or something, the only thing that was missing was a goal. We will go away analysis the game again but I don’t expect anything different from Dumbarton, they get an early goal, sit in and grind out results, fair play to them they are good at it but I would rather my team go about business in the way we did and try and play football in the correct manner and hopefully we can get a goal on Sunday then Dumbarton will need to come out to try and win the game but at the moment I expect them to have a similar game plan to what they had tonight for the last eighty minutes of the game.