Gary Cronin: 'It's obvious that injuries are costing us - but we can't moan about that'

Bray Wanderers boss Gary Cronin admits that his side have been heavily impacted by several injuries that have sprung up in his squad.

The Seagulls were held to a scoreless draw by Cork City on Friday evening at the Carlisle Grounds – their fifth draw of the season out of a possible six.

The result saw them remain outside of the playoff positions for the time being.

“It’s another two points dropped,” Cronin told extratime.com after Friday’s stalemate. “If you don’t score goals, you don’t win games.

“We’re generally quite solid at the back and that’s a good trait to have. We just didn’t take our chances in the first half and weren’t given what we thought was a certain goal that crossed the line – that’s the story of our life at the moment.”

On the injury crisis within his squad – he added: “It’s not good at the moment, that’s me being perfectly honest.

“I haven’t come across this number of injuries in my managerial career before but we have to deal with it.”

Last week Bray were dealt a hammer blow with the loss of Dylan Barnett with a freak eye injury against Cobh Ramblers – compounding their injury woes which resulted in Bray only being able to name four outfield players on their bench on Friday night.

“We can’t moan about it – that’s why you have a squad and young lads in your under-19s. It’s obvious that it is hurting us.

“Last week Dylan Barnett gets one in a million freak of an incident with a ball in the eye – and with the way it hit him it has damaged his eye.

“It’s just our luck at the moment when it comes to injury. But we can’t moan about that – it can happen any squad.

“There’s no runaways in the league - so hopefully we can get our squad back and not have too big of a gap to pull back.”

However, one positive that awaits Bray – and their fellow League of Ireland clubs – is a potential return of fans to stadia in the summer.

And that is something that excites the Bray boss in his third full year as a senior League of Ireland manager.

“I’m really looking forward to the fans coming back,” he added. “As we know – football is all about the fans and we want our fans and supporters back in the ground which is hopefully sooner rather than later.

“They’ll be looking for results as well and we’ll be looking to rectify that on the training ground.

“You look at games like Friday when the game has gone a bit dead, like Cork sitting in and we just needed a bit of a lift.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have anything to change it really but if the crowd were there it might give the players an extra edge.

“But obviously they’re not there and there’s silence in the ground. It can be like a training game sometimes.

“The sooner the better they are back in. but we have to give them what they deserve and that’s win.”