On that occasion they lost 3-2 after a late rally proved worthless, but they did manage to avoid defeat here with John McGovern and Dylan Watts, from the penalty spot, securing a point against Shels.<\/p>\n
Bradley felt his side excelled after the concession of the second goal, but it didn\u2019t totally cool off his displeasure.<\/p>\n
“We just didn\u2019t start, it was a sloppy start from us. Defensively really poor obviously and we gave them a headstart,” he told RT\u00c9 Sport.<\/p>\n
“Just sloppy – sloppy minds – we weren\u2019t ready to start the game and that\u2019s not acceptable. We can\u2019t do that and get away with it.<\/p>\n
“We did tonight, we were the better team, but we can\u2019t be giving teams two-goal leads.<\/p>\n
“The players worked it out, they\u2019re top players, but you can\u2019t start like that in any game.”<\/p>\n
![\"sse\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/002406b7-614.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Bradley was again heartened by the response of his players, with the champions now five points behind Bohs with as many games played.<\/p>\n
“After the goals we gave away we were excellent in every capacity,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Frustrating at the start but everything else after that was really, really good.”<\/p>\n
“Of course, yeah,” Bradley added when asked was it two points dropped.<\/p>\n
Shelbourne manager Joey O\u2019Brien, meanwhile, feels his side are just small percentage points away from ascending the table.<\/p>\n
The side\u2019s wait for a home league win this season continues after throwing away such a promising advantage. By no means a bad result, but given they were two goals up after 13 minutes, it was a night ultimately full of frustration.<\/p>\n
\n
The manager has experienced that in a number of games this year already as they trail leaders Bohs by seven points, but he\u2019s confident it won\u2019t take huge changes to start picking up victories.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a long way to go, we\u2019ve definitely left points behind in the first couple of games,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Galway here, Shamrock Rovers tonight, St Pat\u2019s the other night \u2013 pretty close margins.<\/p>\n
“Derry and Bohs next Friday and Monday, great isn\u2019t it?”<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien, understandably, was delighted with the side\u2019s early assault on Rovers, but less impressed with how they dealt with such a golden opportunity.<\/p>\n
“I thought we started really well, we got on the front foot, went after the game \u2013 really attacked the game. Two up and another big chance to go three up with John (Martin).<\/p>\n
“Then we sat back a little bit, let them come into it a bit, they got a good goal to make it 2-1, a bad decision by Wes (Speel) obviously to come out and take him (McGovern) out for the penalty \u2013 I don\u2019t think he\u2019d a lot of work to do after that.<\/p>\n
“Second half they\u2019d a bit of possession but there weren\u2019t many chances really. We had a good chance at the end and we didn\u2019t take it.”<\/p>\n
Watch Real Madrid v Manchester City in the Champions League on Wednesday from 7.30pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News app and on rte.ie\/sport<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley has said that “sloppy minds” are not acceptable as the side once again…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-338458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}