Stephen Kenny: We’ve had our bad night

Dundalk 0 Sligo Rovers 3: Dundalk boss Stephen Kenny has backed his side to bounce back from the heaviest home defeat of his reign by beating Cork City in tomorrow night’s potential title decider at Oriel Park.

“It’s a bad night for us but where we are now is that we had a four-point lead, now it’s a point,” said Kenny after their 3-0 defeat to Sligo Rovers.

“We’ve Cork at home on Tuesday. In the past over the last couple of years we’ve always rose to the occasion in the big games and put in a performance that merited a victory. We’re going to have to dig deep now and do that on Tuesday.

“If you had told us we were going to lose 3-0, you wouldn’t have believed it but life tests you in all shapes and forms. We’ve had our bad night. There’s a chance to redeem it on Tuesday and it’s a chance we must take.

“A win would put us four points up, which would be a brilliant position to be in, so that has to be our ambition now,” he said.

The league leaders got off to the worst possible start when they fell behind after just 47 seconds with the concession of a goal their manager branded a “shocker”.

Goalkeeper Gary Rogers completely missed a pass back from Brian Gartland and Achille Campion was on hand to fire home.

The hosts responded well to that setback with Ronan Finn having three big chances to equalise but on each occasion he failed to find the net.

Oriel Park was stunned into silence though when the visitors doubled their advantage in the 37th minute with substitute Phil Roberts collecting a Raffaele Cretaro pass before beating Sean Gannon and Andy Boyle to curl a superb effort past the despairing dive of Rogers.

It looked as though the champions would be thrown a lifeline when Sligo were reduced to 10 men in the 54th minute after Liam Martin was shown a straight red card by referee Ben Connolly for taking down Gannon as he burst down the flank.

However, any hope of a turnaround was all but ended on the hour mark when the Bit O Red made it three with a superb goal on the counter attack.

Cretaro exchanged passes with John Russell to take Boyle out of the equation before rifling a stunning shot past Rogers. Dundalk fought valiantly after that but could find no way past an inspired Ciaran Nugent, who made sure of his fourth clean sheet on the trot with a string of superb saves, in particular from David McMillan and Daryl Horgan.

DUNDALK:

Rogers; Gannon, Gartland (Shiels 72), Boyle, Massey; Shields (McEleney HT), O’Donnell; Meenan (Mountney 52), Finn, Horgan; McMillan.

SLIGO ROVERS:

Nugent; Adebayo-Rowling, Leahy, Boylan, Keohane; McCann, Russell (Kearns 67), Roddan, Martin; Cretaro, Campion (Roberts 32).

Referee:

B Connolly.