Dan Casey says letting a lead slip against Rangers is going to hurt ‘for a while’ – but is determined not to let a hangover derail their league form.
The Irish defender was in the middle of it for Motherwell at Hampden in the Premier Sports Cup semis as they led through Andy Halliday but ultimately fell short after a second-half fightback from Gers. Like his teammate Ewan Wilson, he sensed Rangers fans turning after their opening goal – and believes it could have gone their way had they held on for a bit longer.
But it wasn’t to be in the end and Casey knows the importance of banishing the demons so they don’t bleed into Saturday’s clash with St Johnstone. He said: “We’ve got a squad that’s capable of doing well this season. That shows in the league with what we’re doing. Getting to the semi-final of the cup was good but we need to keep going. We can’t let there be a hangover from Sunday. We need to against St Johnstone on Saturday, get a result and kick on in the league. If we get a result we can go into the international break in a great place.
“Overall, it was quite frustrating. We didn’t really get ourselves going. We said to ourselves don’t concede early in the second half. But they got a quick goal and sort of killed the game a bit for us.
“You could hear their fans were getting on them a bit before then. If we had held out for longer, who knows what would have happened. But we shot ourselves in the foot and conceded. It was a tough ask to get back into it.
“We sort of rode our luck for a bit but they came up with their goods in the end. It’s going to hurt us for a while. I don’t think we necessarily played great, but we had a chance.
“It was a semi-final and it doesn’t really matter if we play well. Going 1-0 up, doing well in the first half and then getting hit with a sucker punch straight after half time sort of killed our momentum. We showed glimpses of what we can do with the ball but we just needed to do a bit more.”