Carberry praises 'exciting' Athlone as young guns impress during draw away to Cabinteely

Andrew Dempsey reports from Stradbrook Road

Athlone Town boss Adrian Carberry has praised his ‘exciting’ side as they went mightily close to securing their first league win of the season on Friday evening.

Athlone caused several problems for Pat Devlin’s Cabinteely and were perhaps unfortunate to leave Stradbrook without all three points.  

“When you come into the game off the back of a number of unlucky defeats, you’ll take a draw away to Cabinteely,” Carberry told extratime.com.

“They make it hard for teams to come here so not many teams come out of here with too many points too easily.

“You would think looking at us that we don’t work on set-pieces or defending because we give away goals.”

The Blue and Black stripes took a 27^th minute lead through Ronan Manning’s penalty-kick, but they were pegged back moments later as Christian Lotefa turned home a Stephen Kinsella corner.

“The set-pieces we dealt with was something we weren’t impressed with as a coaching staff.

“There was a couple of warnings before then, but we didn’t pick up the player and we need to be better when it comes to that.

“I thought we got better as the game went on, but we were a bit all over the shop and we sorted that out at half-time.

“When we do get to play, we can play some fantastic stuff. We have some great players and always create chances, score goals and are exciting to watch.”

And after being in charge of Athlone for nine months, Carberry admits that he has noticed a profound difference in the league today compared to his previous stint in it as a player.

“I was obviously away with the Women’s game for a couple of years, but I was taken aback with how quick and fast it was compared to the women’s side of the game,” he adds.

“It has gone way more professional now which is a great thing. I don’t know how Pat does it here at Cabinteely, I’m wrecked after half a season of it!

“We have a small coaching staff and it does take a bit out of you, but we will expand our staff around us.

“We’ll be looking at the analysis side of things and getting people in for that just to prolong the whole thing.”

Should he remain in charge of Athlone, Carberry added that he will be likely to utilise an improved budget ahead of next season.

“There seems to be a bit of investment coming next year and please god I’ll still be in the job for next year which seems to be the case.

“We’ll be building again, and that’s what it was this year. I didn’t know an awful lot about the league after being out for a while, so it was about getting a team on the pitch.

“We’re an exciting team to watch but I think we need to add some players in one or two positions to give us a dig out.

“We’re on a shoestring budget at the moment, one that is probably the lowest in the league so there’s just investment coming.

“We’ve got fantastic facilities in place now and we’re on the right side of playing them off so I think the next step is starting to invest money into the team.”