Ruaidhri Higgins: 'The lowest point of my Derry City career'
Derry City manager blasts referee's performance but insists it is not the reason for Derry City's exit from the Europa Conference League
Ruaidhri Higgins has described tonight’s European exit at the hands of FCB Magpies as the lowest point of his Derry City career.
The Candystripes won tonight’s second leg 2-1 at the Brandywell, but exited the Europa Conference League 3-2 on aggregate following last week’s 2-0 defeat in Gibraltar.
Goals from Mark Connolly and Pat Hoban had wiped out the Magpies’ first leg lead, but a first half red card to Adam O’Reilly made it an uphill battle, and despite taking the game to extra time, the home side fell to a late goal from Magpies substitute Evan De Haro.
“We shot ourselves in the foot last week, there's no doubt about it,” Higgins said afterward. “It's cost us and obviously stuff went against us tonight which is mind blowing, really, really mind blowing when you look at the incidents back and you see it.
“Last week I can't make any excuses for the performance, it wasn't good enough but this week I feel we've been dealt a really bad hand.”
Referee Antoine Paul Chiaramonti disallowed a first half goal from Pat Hoban before red carding midfielder Adam O’Reilly with the Candystripes 1-0 up.
“I felt the key moment was not allowing Pat Hoban's goal,” Higgins continued. “It's an absolutely perfect goal, if anything Ash Taylor has got a hold of Pat and not the other way around. It's a perfect goal, it's a brilliant goal and for the life of me it's an incredible decision and it's even worse when I've seen it back. I felt at the time it was a perfect goal but I've seen it back and I just can't see anything for him to give that.
“With the sending off, I'm not sure if it's a penalty but it's not a yellow card, he hasn't dived. There's some sort of coming together but it's definitely not a yellow card and even at that with ten men we've created chance after chance.
“We've had so many opportunities tonight to get ourselves into the next round and it's very, very raw at the minute but ultimately we're out which isn't good enough.”
Higgins conceded that despite the controversy around those first half decisions, losing to a part time team from Gibraltar is one of the poorest results in the club’s European history.
“There's no getting away from that,” he agreed. “I'm not going to sit here and say any different. It's a real low point personally and for the club. It's a tie we should be winning. There's no point in saying otherwise. It's a tie we should be winning and it's poor.
“The contrast between this time last year with the European campaign and now, it basically sums up sport, and it sums up football, the highs and the lows. It shapes you I think in the long term but as I said here now it's a really poor feeling and I’m gutted.”
“It's going to hurt badly probably for a long time internally but we don't have too much time to dwell on it because obviously Sunday comes around very, very quickly.”