The game was forced  straight to penalties, as stipulated in the rules of this year’s competition.

 

“I know that might sound like sour grapes afterwards but no it’s purely the fact that I think we had got momentum in the game at that point and I think we had the squad that was fit to go the extra 30 minutes that you would maybe get.”

 

In the penalty shoot-out it was the Derg men who held the nerve to emerge 9-8 victors after Dwayne McManus had his spot-kick saved by the Derg keeper Paul Wells and Alex Holder’s effort crashed back off the crossbar.

 

McConkey admitted football can be cruel game and said he felt for both players.

“When it came to penalties the boys did perform superbly well, I feel so much for young Alex (Holder) there at the end where its so close yet so far you know. I know Mono (Dwayne McManus) will be disappointed as well, in terms of he is such a striker of the ball over the years. He simply doesn’t miss, it shows it such a cruel, cruel game.”

 

Reflecting upon his teams performance over 90 minutes McConkey said:

“I thought the first 20 minutes was very end-to-end, we were sizing each other up which is exactly how we thought it would go, I thought they were very good in the next 10 minutes, they caused us problems, then we came back in again before half-time and responded very well to their goal.

 

“We’re disappointed with both goals, we feel that we could have defended them better. We had three or four opportunities to win the ball before the firs one and then the second one was just too easy for them to break through.”