KEVIN DOHERTY insisted reading Drogheda United were being written off again was the motivation for Friday night’s 0-0 draw with St Patrick’s Athletic.
The Drogs ground down a point against one of the title favourites – something they failed to do in their two visits to Richmond Park last season.
Doherty felt it could have been more too, as he believes his side should have had a late penalty for a shirt pull by Anto Breslin on Cian Bolger.
But he said that the Drogs were mostly fired up by comments in the build-up and following their 2-0 President’s Cup defeat last week that he felt disrespected his FAI Cup winners..
He said “I’m sick of saying it already, but before a ball was kicked everyone was writing us off, everyone.
“This is no one at St Pat’s by the way, to be clear. Pat’s are a brilliant club and everyone is very respectful. But just listening to some of the stuff, you may as well not have turned up.
“I watched a couple of previews, it comes up on your phone and sometimes you can’t avoid them, we have got a point from a game so we’re not getting carried away.
“But at times it’s as if we have never played a game before, me and Daire (Doyle, assistant) have never managed before, like we’ve never been successful before.
“We’re playing against a seriously good team in St Pat’s, an unbelievable squad and an excellent manager, but we may as well have not turned up listening to everyone.
“Not one person I heard even thought we had a half a chance in this game.”
“I heard some ridiculous stuff after the President’s Cup which is essentially a pre-season friendly.
“Friends of mine saying stuff by the way, ‘they are miles off’. We didn’t have to be ready for last week.
“As much as it would have been nice to win the President’s Cup, we had a couple of knocks and had to mind a few players, we had to make sure we were ready for Feb 14.”
But he acknowledged that there is no harm in using the critics comments for motivation, as he brought up how his side were outsiders for the FAI Cup final against Derry City.
He added: “We need to use things that might annoy you. I don’t want to go back to it, the Cup final, a big pitch, we’ll get destroyed…right.
“But we’re not celebrating anything, it’s the first game of the season, but we’re playing against a team that are title favourites,and rightly so, they are class.
“But I had that bit of fire in my belly today of that. The players had too.”
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