Rodney McAree insists Dungannon Swifts 'not good enough to be complacent' after falling to Loughgall defeat
Rodney McAree felt his Dungannon Swifts side “crumbled” after Loughgall handed them their first home Premiership defeat of the season and believes the result shows there’s still plenty of room for improvement despite an impressive start.
The Swifts entered Saturday’s fixture against their Mid-Ulster rivals as the only remaining unbeaten top-flight side after winning five and drawing one so far at Stangmore Park, conceding just one goal in the process – a late Matthew Shevlin equaliser for Coleraine on the opening day.
They’d collected 32 points from a possible 42 in County Tyrone across 2024 and when Andrew Mitchell struck a first half opener, it looked like that impressive record for the Premiership’s third-placed side would continue.
However, Loughgall winger Ryan Waide netted twice in as many second half minutes to stun the hosts before Robbie Norton fired home a third, finishing off an impressive attacking move to seal just their second league triumph this season.
Dungannon missed an opportunity to leapfrog Ballymena United, who lost 1-0 to Crusaders at Seaview, into second while leaders Linfield were also defeated, but McAree insists their focus is on surviving rather than a title fight.
When asked if any complacency had crept in after their fine start, he said: "We spoke about that before the game and we’re certainly not good enough to be complacent – I wouldn’t like to think we are complacent.
"We’re not the finished article. People maybe get carried away because we’re sitting where we are in the league and expectations rise and people think you’ll do this and that, but we’re still Dungannon Swifts and fighting for survival as such.
"We’re still looking to pick points up and improve – there’s massive improvements to be made. It’s maybe one of those days, and hopefully it is, that has presented itself in the middle of a good run of games and performances.
"We have to learn from our mistakes and the only way we’ll improve as a group is if we learn.”
Dungannon have displayed massive defensive improvements this season, coming into Saturday’s game conceding just 10 times in 13 outings – a far cry from the 80+ they’ve leaked in three of the last four campaigns – and McAree doesn’t want old habits to resurface.
"We have to look at it,” he added. “We’ll look at the game back and speak about it as a group and try to identify the mistakes we’ve made and improve on those.
"We are a team that’s trying to get better week in, week out. From I’ve came back to the club we’ve improved massively, but today was a little bit of a mirror image to games last season where we conceded poor goals and give ourselves a mountain to climb.”