Ruaidhri Higgins issues rallying call to Brandywell faithful and asks them to raise the roof
Ruaidhri Higgins is tasked with masterminding a European recovery after his team perished on the rock of Gibraltar last Thursday
Ruaidhri Higgins is dreaming of a Derry miracle but is reluctant about seeing his name entering the record books.
The Derry City manager is tasked with masterminding a European recovery after his team perished on the rock of Gibraltar last Thursday.
No Irish team has ever overcome a two-goal first-leg deficit to progress in Europe but Higgins believes Derry can do so after suffering a 2-0 defeat to minnows Magpie in last Thursday's Conference League opener in Gibraltar.
Higgins, 39, would be embarrassed to have his name associated with a piece of history that mixes glory with failure. Still, he has a problem to fix and is confident his players can solve it in Thursday's return leg.
The Derry manager said: “If training this week is anything to go by, the hunger in people's eyes, seeing people wanting to put things right makes me think we’ll be okay.
“I don’t see it as a chance to break a record or anything, it’s not one to really be proud of, seeing as we lost 2-0. We have a job to do. We know where we went wrong last week.
“We’ll use the fuel to energise us and go out and put in an unbelievably courageous and committed performance because we all know we let people down, we let ourselves down and we now have a real opportunity to put that right.”
To outsiders, it may seem as though Derry underestimated Magpies but Higgins insists that wasn’t the case, saying: “With so much at stake in these games, we did our homework the way we do on every other opposition but we weren’t able to get our eyes on them the way we’d like to because all their games were played behind closed doors.
“We got to one game which isn’t enough really; we got as much out of our preparation as we possibly could, but the thing that went wrong was that we just didn’t perform the way that we know we can do.
“So we now have an opportunity to put it right. I don’t think we were good enough, I don’t think we’ve done anything to underestimate anybody, that wasn’t the case. But we underperformed and we have to take that on the chin and fight back.”
Two things help in this regard.
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The first is Derry’s home record this season - nine of their 13 matches at the Brandywell ending in victory. The second is their goalscoring threat.
Close season signing, Pat Hoban, is the League’s top scorer; Derry, by a distance, are the top scoring side in Ireland’s top flight; so finding the net twice in 90 minutes is well within their range.
Higgins says: “It doesn’t really matter when we get the opening goal as long as we get it.
“The fact that we’ve scored in our last four home games, we’ve scored 12 goals, shows we’re creating opportunities and scoring goals at home.
“We want to get the crowd behind us, we need them, we need everyone who comes to the ground to be together. And if that is the case, our stadium can be a really powerful place and that’s what we want it to be.
“We’ve seen how special European nights can be in the Brandywell, and we need them to get right behind us from minute one.
“There is no doubt that we can score goals but we also have to be very mindful that we’re set up right behind the ball when we’re attacking, because they’ve got threats as well.
"We can’t just go gung-ho, we have to attack but with a certain amount of discipline as well, commit bodies forward but be mindful that they have one or two threats on the counter attack.”
And if all those elements come together, then glory is attainable, adding another European scalp to the two he took last year as boss, and the couple of helped claim in 2006 when he was a player under Stephen Kenny’s free-flowing entertainers, who knocked Gothenburg and Gretna out of Europe.
Higgins says: “What I felt last year did was that it galvanised the club, the players, and supporters. Big victories can do that in Europe.
"You would be proud to be manager, leading it, but as I said, it is not about me, it is about giving special memories to players, to players’ families, staff, board members, supporters, the lot.
“And that is where I get the most satisfaction.”
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