Kilduff hails spirited response as Dundalk atone for Longford loss

Ciaran Kilduff expressed his delight at the way his Dundalk FC side responded to their shock 3-2 defeat to Longford Town by overcoming in-form UCD with the same scoreline at Oriel Park on Friday night to move a step closer to promotion from the SSE Airtricity League First Division.

A performance in Longford that the manager branded ‘unforgivable’ and ‘inexcusable’ was answered in emphatic fashion, as Dundalk battled from behind to defeat a UCD team that had suffered only two losses in their previous 13 outings.

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“We’re a really, really honest group, and I try to be as honest with the lads. We tell them exactly how we feel at certain times,”

Kilduff told The Democrat. “We looked at it again on Monday; there was no point hiding from it. We felt like it was our poorest performance of the season, but then tonight is probably our biggest win of the season, so it’s all emotional.

“I actually said that to the lads today after the game. I said, last week I came after youse. That was a really disappointing night. I don’t think any of them tried to argue with me.

“They were as frustrated about things as I was. They’re a brilliant group. I couldn’t be prouder of them, and they responded tonight, which was to win the game, and they did it.”

After conceding first to UCD, Dundalk briefly saw their cushion at the summit trimmed to three points, as second-placed Cobh Ramblers overcame Finn Harps 4-1 at home that same evening.

Yet Dundalk soon restored command, with two penalties from Gbemi Arubi—now the team’s leading scorer on 11 goals—followed by Eoin Kenny’s 10th of the season, sealing a 3-1 turnaround.

“That was all we needed to do, we just needed to win our game,” said Kilduff. “It was challenging; you really learned a lot about us there tonight.

“We won one of the last four, and we deserved to lose last week, and then, going a goal behind this week, you’re looking around, going, what have we got here? Are we going to respond? And they did.

“We’re getting used to Gbemi scoring. Gbemi is 20—he was 19 at the start of the season. Eoin is still 19, coming up with goals. I’m not saying it completely matters, but Eoin is the highest-scoring teenager in this division, and it’s character goals as well.

“That’s a big goal tonight; it turned out to be the winner, and he’s scored big goals and provided assists in the last couple of weeks as well. He’s a huge player for us, and he needs to keep going and finish this season as strongly as he can, because the sky’s the limit.”

Although UCD quickly replied after Kenny made it 3-1, The Students offered little threat thereafter, unable to trouble Dundalk across the final 15 minutes of normal time and the eight minutes of stoppage added on.

“There’s a lot of lads playing and not training,” Kilduff explained. “There’s a lot of lads nursing quite serious injuries and high-risk injuries. You can see that in the last 10 minutes—not that we were hanging on, but we were going under the pressure. We needed to really dig deep there.

“Even Rohan Vaughan, I know it was a tough shift for him, but we just threw him on at the last minute because Sean Spaight started getting cramp, Decky McDaid was beginning to struggle. He didn’t get a warm-up, he didn’t get any instruction, he was just thrown in and ran around.

“I’ve been a striker myself back in the day, and it’s a graveyard shift. All of them just had to go to that place tonight and just dig in for each other, and you could see the overpour of emotion at the end.”