Bermingham warns against taking the foot off the pedal
By Stephen Leonard
ST PATRICK’s Athletic captain Ian Bermingham insists his team will need to be ready for the eventual resumption of their Airtricity League season.
Because of the Coronavirus outbreak, the Saints, like their rivals, have been forced to train individually, but Bermingham has stressed the players will have to keep their foot on the pedal in order to avoid losing any ground in the title race.
Ian Bermingham
The Inchicore side is scheduled to return to Premier Division action with a trip to Dalymount Park to face Bohemians on Friday, April 3, hoping to start closing the nine-point gap that separates them from leaders Shamrock Rovers who have played a game more.
Speaking about the new training measures that have been put in place, Bermingham told The Echo “We’re training individually now because of the whole thing regarding social distancing, but we have our programmes to follow and record.
“Obviously we’d like to be training as a team because we push each other, but training individually is something we would have been doing in pre-season, so, while it’s not ideal, it’s not a shock to the system.
“I think if there was even a glimmer of hope that we could train [as a team] we would be doing it, but we’ll keep training individually, keep it going, because we know if we don’t do it, and keep working hard, we’ll get left behind” he stressed.
The St Pat’s skipper is not confident that Airtricity League action will resume early next month saying “If I’m being honest, I don’t think we’ll be back for then.
“Realistically speaking, I think this is only the beginning and it’s going to get worse, but we still have to be ready for then, because if we’re not we could find ourselves in real trouble.”
St Pat’s are due back in action on April 3
Yet, while the season itself has been severely disrupted by the pandemic, Bermingham is very much cognisant of the bigger picture in all of this.
“We have to be thinking about other members of society, old people, people with underlying illnesses” he insisted.
“While we might be lucky and not get it [Covid-19], they could. A family member could. If anyone died because of it, you’d never forgive yourself or the authorities.
“I think this whole thing is becoming very real for everyone. We’ve never experienced anything like this before, certainly not in my lifetime.
“So I think the message that should be getting out there is that, while you might be ok, others might not. This virus is easy to catch, so we’ve really got to follow the guidelines and hopefully we’ll get through this” he said.
