Rory McArdle heaped praise on the Iron medical staff for helping him to get out onto the pitch so soon after his recent injuries.
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17 February 2018The United skipper has been in the wars since playing Fleetwood Town a fortnight ago, where he cut his eye, and has lost half of his front tooth in the process.
However, McArdle has said that the medical staff have ‘lifted’ him, thereby allowing him to get back so soon.
The centre-back discussed his recovery, the midweek results and Ryan Yates’ first goal in an interview with iFollow Iron.
ON HIS RECENT FACIAL INJURIES…
RM: I’m fine. It’s all part and parcel of it. However, it’s all happened in the last two weeks. It’s been tough to be honest but credit to the medical staff. Whenever someone has any injuries, it’s important that they try and lift them. They’ve done that and have also done everything that’s possible to make sure that I’m able to play. I’ve got to thank them for putting their time and effort in. They have come to appointments with me when they could have just stayed at the ground. It helps when you have that and the lads have been great as well.
ON HOW MUCH CONFIDENCE CAN BE DRAWN FROM THE DRAW AT PETERBOROUGH…
RM: We’ve just got to try and nullify the tiny little bits that are causing a few problems at the minute. We need to try and stop conceding but we have to take that confidence from how good we were on the ball. As long as we can keep that back door shut, try and get back to keeping clean sheets and get back to taking three points we’ll be happy.
ON THE RESULT…
RM: If you look at the game as a whole, both teams would probably say that they had good chances to win the game. We feel that we had some good chances, probably dominated with the ball and moved them about. Ivan (Toney) hit the bar in the first-half and there were some half-chances here and there. However, Gillo (Matt Gilks) had to make some good saves.
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BOUNCING BACK FROM SATURDAY’S RESULT…
RM: Whenever you lose a game you go into the next one thinking that you just don’t want to lose. In the worst case scenario you want to come away with a draw. A lot of teams will come here (Peterborough) and find it tough. They have got a lot of good attacking players as they showed in spells. They can be dangerous. On the other side of the coin, I thought that we moved the ball well. There were spells where we were on top and they were camped in. They made it hard for us and I thought that they showed us quite a lot of respect in the second-half with how they set up and sat in. It’s important that we try and learn from it and when it happens again, we will try and open teams up.
ON RYAN YATES BAGGING A GOAL ON HIS FIRST IRON START…
RM: It’s great. We always speak as a team about the importance of all of us chipping in with goals. It’s unfair to rely on Novs (Lee Novak), Ivan and Hopps (Tom Hopper) who are the three strikers that everyone looks towards to score. Everyone else has got to start chipping in. For Yatesy to do that from midfield is great. The gaffer (Graham Alexander) spoke about it before the game, telling us to release one of them to dart into the box because you know balls are going to be coming in. Ryan timed it brilliantly and so credit to him. He’s come into a game that isn’t easy to come into and settled into it. I would say that he got his rewards with the goal.
ON THE SAVES FROM MATT GILKS…
RM: You’ve seen the saves that he’s made throughout the season and the standards that he’s set. He does it in training every day as well so it’s great knowing that if teams do break on us or the ball does slip past, you have Gillo (Matt Gilks) there and that presence in front of goal. That’s what he’s there for. Credit to him, he made some big saves.
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