Darren Mullen spoke to us this evening after his side lost 2-0 against Dundela.
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00:00Darren, 2-0 defeat tonight. I think the obvious starting point, the turning point of the game
00:05was Dundella's first goal. What's your understanding of the situation and what's been communicated
00:10to you about what happened?
00:12You could see, everybody could see it was a mile offside. The linesman put his flag
00:17up and then for some reason took it down, had a conversation with the referee. Speaking
00:21to the official after he said it was our player that played the ball. I don't know where that's
00:26coming from. Spoke to the referee and he said then he wasn't interfering with play. If he's
00:31not there, engine doesn't make that attempt. And then our lads stopped. Just stopped. Because
00:34it was that blatantly offside, they just stopped and thought it was going to be given and it
00:38continued. And to be honest, that rocked us because we were well in control. It looked
00:44as if a goal was coming because we had that much possession. Knocked the ball out really
00:50well, opened them up. I don't think Mitch had a save to make on it. And then it just
00:56had that knock-on effect. We were rocked after it. And you can see it's something after
00:59which we shouldn't have done. We're saddled. But it looked like a massive impact on the
01:04game. There's no point in saying anything different. Everybody makes a mistake but that's
01:07a shocking mistake. It's laughable. It's funny it isn't. Because it does affect the game.
01:15You think referees are fit for purpose. As I say, some of the decisions were poor. And
01:20I said that to Neil at the end. I'm not one for giving referees any amount of abuse but
01:27you have to be fit for your job. And that was a very easy decision to get wrong and
01:30ultimately cost the game.
01:31Yeah and there really was the 1-2 punch then after that because they made it 1-0 but then
01:35a few minutes later it was 2-0 and you're probably still reeling from that decision.
01:39Yeah, I think half the players are still arguing with it. And look, that's something you need
01:43to learn from because on one hand you can say there's nothing we can do to change it
01:46but it was that bad. It did have that effect on it. We were still having discussions with
01:52the lanesman. It did have an effect on it and they capitalised on it. And then even
01:56the second half we came out with three really good chances in the first five or ten minutes
02:00and we didn't take them.
02:01Look, there's part of it, yes, you can blame the officials. There's another part of it
02:04as well. You need to realise we just haven't been good enough. The officials aren't costing
02:11us every game. If anybody doesn't realise it, this is a rebuild. This is a massive
02:16rebuild. I come in to fix things and I put on the young kids at the end of it. It needs
02:20to be rebuilding with kids and I'll do that. It is a rebuild. It's just a matter of staying
02:25in this league, which is going to be tough, going and reaching performance. And yes, you
02:29could say about players going out injured but there are players that have been playing
02:34parts of those games as well. So it's going to be very, very tough. To be honest, it's
02:39difficult for me to watch it because when I left, from that type of a change room, experience,
02:47hunger, desire, quality, it's tough at the minute. But you can't feel sorry for yourself,
02:54especially me as manager. I start feeling sorry for myself then it filters through.
02:57So the players are under no illusions at this stage how difficult of a situation we're in.
03:02And there's only so much that we can do as coaches. At some point in time we need the
03:07players to step up. But other than that, I thought tonight, large parts of it was good.
03:11But you just have to take your chances.
03:13You're back, next game is at home again. Next Friday night's you have a week but it's probably
03:17going to be a long week now, isn't it, after the frustration from tonight?
03:20It is, yes. We've had all the 40s out, suspended. Yes, it shouldn't be getting big but complete
03:27frustration from down here. A block and a ball in the corner and you get a free kick
03:33That is hugely frustrating. I'm putting myself in a huge way to get booked.
03:38Decisions like that make it very, very frustrating for players.