Pierce Sweeney on his injury issues and Exeter City's form

PIERCE SWEENEY IS THE CLUB CAPTAIN FOR EXETER CITY FC

It’s been another tough week, albeit we gave league leaders Wycombe, who arrived at St James’s Park on the back of 11 straight victories, a real fright last Tuesday evening.

Unfortunately, I was forced to watch on from the sidelines with a recurrence of the hip issue that has affected me on and off for a while now. It flared up after our FA Cup win over Chesterfield and Tuesday came just a day too soon for me.

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On a more positive note, while there’s plainly an underlying issue, I’m essentially fine again now. Better still, the plan is that I’ll visit a private clinician recommended by Gary Caldwell and our physio Michael McBride at some point next week for an injection which should, fingers crossed, alleviate any issues for the next five or six months.

As regards to the Wycombe game, it goes without saying, despite the visitor’s good run, we’re always looking to win our home games. And when we raced into a 2-0 lead with little more than 20 minutes on the clock, we appeared well on course to do just that, so it was a little disappointing we were forced to settle for a share of the points.

That said, when Wycombe drew level within 10 minutes of the restart, I suspect plenty of people thought the Chairboys would go on to win the game; as it was, we steadied the ship and, to our credit, I thought we finished the game the stronger of the two sides.

Strange as it may sound, I think we might have started a bit too well – had we gone in at the break 1-0 up and scored our second goal midway through the second half then I reckon we’d have seen the game out; as it was, a side full of confidence had plenty of time to gather themselves and respond.

It probably didn’t help that Kevin McDonald, who was excellent on his first start since March, was never going to last much more than an hour and came off after 63 minutes.

In the time he was on the pitch, Kev lined up alongside Jake Richards in the centre of midfield and I’m sure the 17-year-old will have benefitted enormously from the experience.

There’s no doubt Jake has huge potential. However, stepping up to men’s football is never easy – you can’t expect to replicate all the things you might look to do in an under-18s game – and well as Jake has played in the games against Chesterfield and Wycombe, the opposition will have been that bit bigger, quicker, and stronger than he is used to, which demands he is that bit cuter.

As we envisaged would be the case, Wycombe were a big, strong unit with some decent players at the top end of the pitch. I think it’s fair to say they evolved a bit under Matt Bloomfield and they certainly played a bit more football than I was expecting, although I think it’s fair to say the physicality and proficiency in the dark arts for which they became infamous hasn’t entirely disappeared.

I caught up with former teammate Alex Hartridge before kick-off. He told me that cup competitions aside, he just can’t get a game right now, which is testament to Wycombe’s strength in depth. I guess that’s only to be expected given the run of form his new club are in, but Alex is a talented player and, as we saw at SJP towards the end of last season, I have no doubt that he’ll seize his opportunity when it does finally arrive.

While there were plenty of positives to take from our performance against Wycombe, it was a little harder to take a great deal of encouragement from our 2-0 defeat at Stockport on Saturday.

For what it’s worth, I thought we were the better side in the first half and played pretty well between our six-yard box and the edge of the Hatter’s penalty area.

Certainly, we had numerous opportunities to affect the opposition goal in the opening 45 minutes but let ourselves down at the top end of the pitch, where we turned the ball over far too easily.

Stockport manager Dave Challinor changed things up a bit at half-time and, truth be told, we never really got going after the break. If I’m being brutally honest, a few of our players didn’t really turn up in the second half. That has happened rather too often this season – we have lots of talented individuals but they’re prone to going missing for large parts of games and that has to change.

Ultimately, we were undone by a couple of defensive lapses – Tristan Crama was unfortunate to score an own goal midway through the second half and went on to concede a penalty, which was converted by Aston Villa loanee Louie Barry, in the 89th minute.

Plainly, it wasn’t Tristan’s best game for us, but the Frenchman has been fantastic for us in the main this season and I’m sure he’ll quickly put his Edgeley Park woes behind him.

As ever, the support we received from the 600-odd City fans who made the long trip to Stockport was exceptional. Of course, it always is, but given the adverse weather over the weekend their efforts were all the more commendable – it was just a shame that having trekked all that way to the north-west we weren’t able to give them a bit more to cheer about.

We’ve got yet another tough game at the weekend when Barnsley are the visitors to SJP. Darrell Clarke’s side sit eighth in the table, but are without a win in their last five league games. Having lost out in last season’s play-offs, they’ll be targeting promotion again this time around and, no doubt, anxious to get back to winning ways on Saturday.

The Tykes won 1-0 on their last visit to SJP in October of last year. However, we beat them 2-1 at Oakwell in January, which was our third victory over them in four games since they were relegated from the Championship in the 2022-23 season and, for sure, we’ll be looking to make it four victories in five games when we face off at the weekend.

After five league games without a win, it’s imperative we get back to winning ways sooner rather than later and three points on Saturday would be a great pick-me-up ahead of five games in a fortnight over the Christmas and new year period.