'Life is always about choices, and I will have a lot of those to make' - Gary Cronin reacts as Bray suffer defeat away to UCD

Bray Wanderers boss Gary Cronin admitted that he has a lot of decisions to make in regard to his side after Friday night’s 4-3 defeat away to UCD.

It was the Seagulls’ first loss against the Students since 2012, and it came in devastating fashion.

While the 4-3 scoreline does not appear bad, Bray were 4-0 down after 80 minutes of the game before a late Gary Shaw hat-trick put an ounce of respectability on the scoreline.

But even at that, Cronin was not happy with his side’s showing in Dublin 4.

“From our point of view the performance for 75 minutes of the game was unacceptable,” he told extratime.com.

“We know that, and we accept that not everything goes your way in football but our unbeaten has stopped with a bang tonight. It’s disappointing from our point of view.

“We gave away awful goals at the start to UCD and the game plan we had didn’t materialise until the last ten minutes. We left that too late in the game...

“We have a big game against Athlone to try and put things right. Between now and then I’ll have choices to make.

“I’ll have players coming back from suspension and international duty. Life is always about choices, and I’ll have a lot of those to make between now and next week.”

All four of UCD’s goals came in two bursts of the game, and that lack of focus during those spells was something that left Cronin frustrated.



“I was looking to make a change before the third goal went in and I turn around and it’s in. To be fair to the lads they haven’t had that lapse in concentration too many times in games this season.

“I believe in the group, and I believe in the players that we will pick ourselves up from this.

“We’ve only been beaten four times this season so there is a lot of character in this group, so we need to get more wins between now and the end of the season.

“Our aim since the defeat at home to Shels has been to get into the playoffs and we are still well in position to do that. We just need to be a lot better than we were tonight.”

Bray were without Brian Maher, Dylan Barnett, Conor Clifford or Richie O’Farrell due to injuries or international call ups or suspensions.

But Cronin refused to use that as an excuse for a poor showing.



“We have a squad there for a reason,” he said. “[Losing players] can have an impact, of course. Richie and Conor are in form.

“You can look at that and say that’s why, but it’s not why. We didn’t do the basics right in a lot of situations and it let us down. UCD were down four players as well so there’s no excuses.”

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