The Louth club have kicked off the 2026 season with two wins (and two clean sheets) from their opening pair of games after comfortably beating the Blues 2-0 last night, with early strikes from Shane Farrell and Mark Doyle’s sending Drogs to the top of the table.
Doherty was made aware of some comments from the opposition camp in the Blues’ match preview, which appear to be from defender John Mahon, who said “when you’re coming up against Drogheda, you know what you’re going to face. Lots of long balls,” although the 45-year-old did not directly name Mahon himself.
And speaking after the home victory, Doherty opened up on the “lazy” perception of his side from some quarters, insisting Drogheda are far more than a ‘set-piece and long ball’ team as he hailed his side for maintaining their 100pc start to the new campaign.
“It's a great strike (by Farrell) and then the second goal is really good play. An excellent goal. I'm not going to get into it now, but the stuff that is said about us… like we can play football as well, you know?,” said Doherty, speaking to the Irish Independent.
“It’s almost like (people think) it’s the only way (we can play). It's lazy, but honestly I don't really care. I just love when we play like that and score goals like the second one because my coaching team can be labelled as ‘they play that way, defensive, it’s just set pieces, it’s all long ball stuff’. We're more than that.
Shane Farrell celebrates after opening the scoring for Drogheda in their victory over Waterford. Photo: Ben McShane
Shane Farrell celebrates after opening the scoring for Drogheda in their victory over Waterford. Photo: Ben McShane
“In fact, one of their players mentioned in their pre-match things on Thursday about us being a ‘long ball’ team. We're more than that.
“I'm not saying we're Barcelona or anything, we make the most of what we have, but some of the goals we’ve scored over the years, like in Tallaght (against Shamrock Rovers) after about 20 passes, that gets forgotten about.
“Look, I'm not looking for… I don't care what people think, it just shows you that maybe we can play a bit and have quality. What was said about Brandon Kavanagh when we signed him? ‘Oh, they will need to get him to do the work.’ Tonight, quality-wise he was really good, but he worked like he always does, absolutely brilliant.
“I get accused of, ‘he uses all of this stuff as motivation’ and sometimes I do, but genuinely, I don't care what people say about us. It is what is in our dressing room and on the pitch that is important.
“I'm bringing it up because I just think that my players, it's not about me or Daire, I think the players deserve more credit and respect at times. But if you start saying that people think ‘oh look, they are top of the league after two games, they think they’re great’. You know what I mean?
“It was a good win and we’ll move on. We have a big game next week that we're all looking forward to.”
Facing their first Louth derby of the season away to newly-promoted Dundalk next Friday, Doherty was impressed by his side’s performance against Jon Daly’s Blues.
“I have to give massive credit to the ground staff and the staff at the club for getting the game to go ahead,” he added, as United Park passed a pitch inspection on Friday afternoon on a day when two matches in the capital were postponed.
“When the Waterford team came in, we analysed them to death all week, but you look at them and think ‘that's a really, really good team,’ It took them a lot to put that team together, some serious players and some serious moves they had to make. Any team with Tommy Lonergan and Pádraig Amond up top, Conan Noonan and Evan McLaughlin too, top quality players. We had to be on our guard and I thought we were.
“So for us to come out and play the way we did, and to start the way we did, was good. And then we probably controlled a lot of it. Luke (Dennison) didn't have any real saves to make but I thought we could have actually got another goal. The goals we got were great, so it was a good night.”