By Gerard Mulreaney (@gerardmulreaney)
After four years st Shamrock Rovers 22 year-old centre-back Sean Heaney felt he need a fresh start. A loan spell with Waterford last season saw him claim a First Division title, and it whetted the appetite for more first-team football.
Last Friday night in Oriel Park Heaney and his team-mates came away with a 0-0 draw against perennial title contenders Dundalk. The result justified his decision to link up with Dave Mackey at the Carlisle Grounds. Heaney said, “I really enjoyed my 4 years at Rovers but it got to the stage where I felt I needed to be playing week in week out and didn’t think I was going to get that at Rovers. When I went down to Waterford that’s what I wanted to prove, that I was capable of playing every week. I had a few options but when I sat down and talked with Dave I thought Bray would be the best club to go play and show people what I can do.”
He was very impressive against Dundalk, along with other members of the back-four plus debut goalkeeper Aaron Dillon. And as he said himself afterwards, they could have won the game, “I thought we executed our game plan perfectly on the night. We knew if we could keep them out at our end that our front 4 would cause them problems which they did. We were probably unlucky not to take all three points in the end but we’ll take the point and move onto next week.”
According to Heaney Bray were confident on the trip up to Oriel Park, confidence probably not shared by many pundits, “We knew going there that we could get something from the game. The game plan was to keep our shape and try catch them on the break which we did a couple of times and probably had the better chances in the game but if you offered us a point before the game we definitely would’ve taken it.”
Heaney is not the only new signing at the club, with the likes of Dan McKenna, Ronan Coughlan, Aaron Dillon, Paul O’Connor, Cory Galvin, Rhys Gorman and many others joining the club in the off-season and he’s delighted with the way he’s settled in, “The lads have been great with me. They’ve made it really easy to settle in. It probably made it a bit easier since there was quite a few new signings but we’ve all got on well so far and hopefully we can have a good season together.”
He also has high praise for the Bray coaching staff, “Dave has been great in short time I’ve been here. He’s really worked hard on our defensive shape because he knows if we keep clean sheets we have the talent at the top end of the pitch to cause any team problems which we showed last night.”
“I think Dave bringing in big Jason Mcguinness has really helped us. Obviously he’s been there and done it in this league and when he talks about defending you listen. I think our performance last night is credit to the work Jason has put in with the back 4 in training.”
“It just takes all the pressure off us. People don’t expect anything from us but we know what we’re capable of and we have our own targets that we are confident of reaching.”
Bray face St Patrick’s Athletic, themselves reeling from an opening day defeat to 10-man Cork City, at the Carlisle Grounds next weekend and Heaney is relishing it, “Really looking forward to next week now but last nights result means nothing if we don’t build on it next week so we’ll work hard again this week in training and hopefully get the 3 points.”
Maybe Bray just might surprise many pundits come the end of the season.
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