Athlone Town manager Martin Russell: 'They were worthy winners, no complaints and a lot for us to learn'

Paul Corcoran reports from Athlone Town Stadium

Athlone Town had a tough start to the 2022 League of Ireland season when they faced one of the favourites for promotion, Waterford, on Friday night.

The Blues ran out 5-2 winners in what was a challenging first game for the Town’s new boss Martin Russell.

“It was tough, we said the opening game against the favourites for the league was always going to be a challenge,” Russell said, speaking to extratime.com after Friday night’s game.

“Particularly with the group that we’ve formed just coming together, we realised that it was going to be tough.

“We should have learned a lot tonight; it’s acknowledging that and trying to do our best to bridge that gap and trying to be better next time.

“It was disappointing, early on we have a chance to get the first goal, things like that against teams that are favourites for the league matter, we didn’t take it.

“We’re not happy with the goals we gave away, there’s lessons to be learned across the board there and we still kept going, we scored a couple and we could have had one or two more ourselves as well, we had chances we threatened with.

“They were worthy winners, no complaints and a lot for us to learn.”

It wasn’t all one way traffic however, Stephen Kenny and Glen McAuley pulled goals back for the home side on the night and at times Athlone did manage to settle the game down – all this with eight players making their debut for the club, eleven including substitutes.

Several of those were even making their League of Ireland debut and for Russell and his squad it will be interesting to see how they can improve as the season progresses and as they prepare to face Treaty Untied next weekend.

“Some of the lads making their debut, they’re getting the experience of what it’s like to play a top side in the First Division and if they can learn from it and put actions in to improve we will get better.

“The positives are that we were creating chances but we also acknowledge that if we want to be serious we have to defend better to stop the scoring.

“We’ll get over this one now and we’ll get preparing in our session Monday and Wednesday and we’ll go there next week having learned some lessons and put in a more competitive performance, that will be the aim.”

Ian Morris: 'You’re always wanting your forward players to get off the mark early goalscoring or assist-wise and they’ve all done that tonight' https://t.co/HSv1kmmoZxpic.twitter.com/L4bSeQdmdY

— Extratime.com (@ExtratimeNews) February 21, 2022