SHAMROCK ROVERS’ RECENTLY-departed manager Trevor Croly believes it was the right time for him to leave the club.
The Hoops boss stepped down from his position with the SSE Airtricity League Premier Division side over the weekend after they were beaten 4-1 by Limerick on Friday night, which leaves them 12 points adrift of leaders Dundalk in fourth place.
The 40-year-old, who took over from Stephen Kenny in November 2012 and won three cups in less than two years in charge, appeared as a guest on Soccer Republic last night and discussed the latter stages of his tenure.
“I think it was time (to leave),” Croly said. “I think I needed to go. What we were putting out on the training pitch wasn’t being taken onto the pitch.
“It’s a bit like a theatre. You can prepare all week but when you’ve got to go and put on a show on Saturday that’s fine. If you’re getting heckled and you’re getting abused, it’s kind of difficult and the players struggled with that.
“I don’t think I lost the dressing room. I think we didn’t deal with it (the pressure). Shamrock Rovers is a unique club in that if you haven’t played for it, managed it or coached it, you might struggle to understand it.
“There is a lot of pressure for players to play there and we just weren’t good enough to deal with it. I’ve got to take the responsibility.
“Over the last three weeks, it probably would have been more beneficial if I was a psychologist as opposed to a coach. Part of coaching management is psychology but we just struggled with the negativity.”
Rovers supporters have been vocal in expressing their discontent with performances in recent weeks and Croly believes his team found it difficult to cope with the criticism.
“You trace it back to the Dundalk game, we lost that one and that was a turning point,” he added. “You could feel the negativity at half-time. We didn’t play particularly well on the game and neither did Dundalk.
“At half-time, the lads were booed off. That certainly doesn’t help you. We go out and we lose the game then. Since then, we struggled to deal with the pressure. The players have struggled to deal with that pressure to be quite honest.
“If you look at results, we’re right up there. Right up until the Dundalk game. To be honest, we’re not a million miles off at the minute.
We’re 12 (points) off the top. It’s unlikely that we will win it now but we can still get into Europe. We’ve got to be realistic about where we are as a club.
“What we’re spending… Our budget is the fourth highest budget in the league so you’ve got to be realistic. We were building to challenge and we wanted to challenge and I think we would have got there. I’m not saying we would have won the league this year but we certainly would have been closer and we can be closer with a positive outlook.”
Click here to watch last night’s Soccer Republic on the RTÉ Player
