DERRY City boss Ruaidhri Higgins admits that the international break in the the League of Ireland season comes at an ideal time for his side to take stock and work on the recovery of their injured players after a "patchy" display in a 1-1 draw at home to Sligo Rovers.
And he also claimed that the match referee apologised to Higgins for an error in disallowing a first-half goal, which would have given City the lead, by not playing the advantage.
Derry retain their status as the only unbeaten side in the league but they had to dig deep, a Ciaran Coll header on 78 minutes their vital equaliser to cancel out a first-half goal from New Zealand international Max Mata.
They are three points behind leaders Bohemians as the league takes a break next weekend to accommodate the international fixtures, a relief for Higgins who is currently missing key men Cameron McJannet, Cameron Dummigan, Mark Connolly, Michael Duffy, Adam O’Reilly and Colm Whelan due to injury.
"It gives players who are injured time to become available for selection time to become available, it's welcome and timely," he says of the break.
"I'm disappointed that we have only taken a point. The performance up until they scored was good, we started really well, they scored with their first attack and we didn't recover brilliantly for the remainder of the game.
“We were patchy and bitty and lost our discipline, particularly in possession, which isn't like us. But I still feel it's two points dropped. It wasn't for the lack of effort that we didn't win the game, it was just a patchy performance, the balance of our team wasn't right, I can never fault their commitment but I was disappointed with our performance from 25 minutes on."
A key moment in the game came early on when Jamie McGonigle scored for Derry after 11 minutes but referee Adriano Reale had stopped play and brought the ball back to give Derry a free kick so the goal didn't stand. Higgins said he spoke to the match official afterwards who admitted he had erred when approached by Higgins.
"He's held his hands up and admitted he got it completely wrong. It's a big, big decision that's gone against us, when we are playing well, we were completely in the ascendancy. In fairness to him it's probably the first time a referee has admitted openly that he got it completely wrong, and to be honest I felt the player in question was lucky to stay on the pitch for an accumulation of fouls as well, similar to a Dundalk player last week who should have been sent off.
"We had enough time from that moment on for our performance to be better and on Friday night we just lacked that bit of spark and edge about our play, we've taken a point but we need to be doing more to be winning these games."