It was a bittersweet Sunday evening for John Martin.
The 24-year-old’s stunning first-half free-kick gave Dundalk the lead against Shelbourne, taking his tally to three goals in his last three games at Oriel Park.
It looked like that would be enough to secure Dundalk a vital win that would have moved them four points ahead of Shels but Damien Duff’s men struck late through Harry Wood to put a dent in the Lilwyhites’ European hopes and leave Martin wondering what might have been.
On the result…
“We would have liked to have kicked on from going out of Europe on Thursday and put a marker down in the league. To pull away from Shels would have been an ideal situation. It was nice to get the goal but we should be winning games like that. We let it slip.”
On conceding in the 83rd minute…
“Shels are a good side and they always carry a threat but it’s disappointing to concede that late on. We’ll look at it back and we’ll analyse it and see what went wrong but, as a team, we should have put it to bed and killed them off. When you don’t do that, you allow teams to capitalise, which they did.”
On the free-kick…
“Fair play to Daryl for giving it to me! I practice them on the pitch and it’s just down to repetition. I was happy to get one and even more delighted to see it go in.”
On three goals in three games at Oriel…
“I’m doing well but it’s disappointing that we haven’t progressed in Europe and made up ground in the league over those three games. You want to be scoring important goals but more than that you want the team to be winning. We feel that we’re building something here. We’ve been a bit unlucky in the last few games but we’re still in a good rhythm and we just need to be a bit more fluid going forward and tighten things up at the back.”
On the run-in…
“Daryl and Sam Durrant coming in during the week gave us a real boost. The result tonight was disappointing but morale is high and we’re looking forward to the run-in. There’s an awful lot to play for.”
