'Nothing won or lost yet' claims Derry midfielder Thomas
"As well as being a good football team we can roll our sleeves up and fight, and I think you need a bit of everything to go and have success.”
Dom Thomas has backed Derry City to bounce back from the defeat to Shamrock Rovers by showing just what they’re capable of at Bohemians tomorrow.
The Candystripes fell eight points behind the league leaders following the defeat at the Brandywell, a missed opportunity to close the gap to two with a game in hand. But with still over half a league season to play, Thomas isn’t panicking.
“Obviously losing any game is a disappointment, but when you go 1-0 up and you’re at home, especially against Rovers, it’s a double blow to lose the game and get nothing from it,” he said.
“I don’t think anything is won or lost yet. We are just coming up to the halfway point of the season and we still have everybody to play twice and we still have a game in hand, so if we can reduce that lead down by winning the game in hand, we then still have to play Rovers twice. There’s a lot of good teams in the league that will be thinking the same. Obviously, where we are now in the league will not define where we’ll be at the end. I think it’s far too early to be calling anything about who’s going to win it. For us, it’s just about taking it once game at a time, and that starts with Bohs on Friday.”
Both teams go into tomorrow’s game in decent form despite both losing last weekend, with Derry City winning five of their last eight games and Bohs winning six of their last eight. As a result, both teams are locked together on 27 points.
“Our form has been good and recently we have put a good run together,” Thomas acknowledged. “We lost to two freak goals, especially the first goal and we lost our way a bit which was disappointing. But the form has been good over the last couple of months and that has taken us up to the top end of the table and challenging.
"But for us now, we just need to put that disappointment behind us and look now to Friday night. We know that will be a hard game, but we know that we can go down there and get the three points. We obviously beat Bohs earlier at home this season so we’ll be looking to go do that again, but we know how hard the game will be.”
Derry City defeated Bohemians 1-0 at the Brandywell back in February, but that was a rare glimmer of light in a difficult period, with City taking just four points from their first five games. The change since then has been evident for Thomas.
“The start was poor, but I think that had a lot to do with a full new team coming in along with a new manager and just getting to know each other and how we wanted to do it,” he stated. “But you’ve seen the form now in the last couple of months and things are starting to click together and long may that continue and we keep picking up three points.
“It’s a hard league, every game is hard, especially away from home where you get the crowd against you and there are intense places to go, but we’ve shown we’ve got that side to our game as well; as well as being a good football team we can roll our sleeves up and fight, and I think you need a bit of everything to go and have success.”
Thomas scored his first goal for the club two weeks ago to salvage a vital point at Drogheda United, and he is pleased to play his part in what is still the very early stages of a new chapter for the club under Tiernan Lynch.
“Coming on and having an impact and scoring a late goal to get a point at a difficult away venue, especially how the game had gone, was good,” he reflected. “That’s what you need to do when you’re coming off the bench to try and impress the gaffer. But I was just delighted for the boys, because they had put the hard work in and kept the wee run going, and in the end, it could prove to be a crucial point, so I was delighted to chip in and play my part.”
“We look to win every game, but getting that win before the break now would be great and if we can get another win on Friday and that gets us on another run, that will be important. I think the team that can get the longest run going will probably be the team that ends up at the top, so you want to get that run going and get as many points on the board as soon as possible.”