Dundalk manager Stephen O'Donnell believes that there may be a direct correlation between their vast number of injuries and the fact that they play on an artificial surface at Oriel Park.
Sunday's draw with Derry City, who also operate on a synthetic surface at the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium, saw further additions to the treatment table with Andy Boyle injured in the warm-up and Greg Sloggett coming off during the 2-2 thriller.
"They [Dundalk and Derry City] are the two teams with the most injuries and we know what the correlation is," O’Donnell told the Irish Independent afterwards.
"It’s gone beyond probably a point of not a great surface to watch football on, it’s actually injuring players. Muscle injuries, there is no give on it. You go up for a header and if you don’t land square on the ball of your foot, you’re doing your ankle ligaments or doing your knee.
"I’m speculating but all I know is we get a lorry load of injuries and Derry get a lot of injuries. I'd just be a bit worried about the injury count."
While speaking to RTÉ Sport, O’Donnell added that any plans to reintroduce a grass pitch at Oriel Park would have to be weighed against its impact on their spending power for the squad itself.
"Dundalk's the biggest brand so it should have a good surface."
"Obviously that’s not my sort of pay grade, I'm involved in the football side of it.
"From that side of it, we all know, we’re all understanding of what it takes. It’s a lot of money to change the pitch and try and be competitive budget wise.
"Ultimately it’s going to come down to a finance thing and I don’t know, can we get help in regards the council or whatnot because from a facility point of view, Dundalk is the biggest in Dundalk and in Louth.
"Dundalk’s the biggest brand so it should have a good surface."
"Are (the injuries) a coincidence or what is it? I’m not sure," he added.
"It’s just disappointing from our point of view in regards injuries. We’re two more bodies down today, it seems when we bring a couple back we lose a couple every week – so that’s frustrating."
On the game itself, O'Donnell said that after a very lacklustre first-half performance, he was delighted with what he saw in the second period as incredibly Robbie Benson and Johannes Yli-Kokko both scored inside 50 seconds to put them 2-1 ahead before Cian Kavanagh rescued a point for the visitors with a brilliant looping header.
"It was topsy-turvy. Obviously when you’re one-nil down you’re happy to get back on level terms. Natural reaction then when you go 2-1 up, you’re disappointed when you get pegged back.
"I was delighted with our response, I thought we took over the second half.
"Obviously when you’re 2-1 up in the 70th-odd minute you want to win the game, it’s a little bit disappointing.
"From a reaction point of view, our personality and our identity, I was delighted with the second half."
Derry boss Ruaidhrí Higgins was less pleased when speaking to RTÉ afterwards and he said he was left scratching his head as to how they were only going back up the road with one point instead of three.
"I’m not happy with a point, I thought we were the better team bar a minute.
"They hadn’t had a chance and end up scoring two goals in a minute, so very, very disappointed from that end. The goals we gave up aren’t good enough.
"We had complete control first half, deserved to go in one-nil in front, we ended up going 2-1 behind.
"We showed bravery and character because we lost a couple of games, it would be easy to feel sorry for ourselves and roll over but we didn’t, we stuck at it and we got a brilliant goal.
"I felt we deserved to go on and win the game and deserved the three points."
Derry have taken one point from their last three games, with the Dundalk match being preceded by 1-0 home losses to both Bohemians and Drogheda United, but Higgins wasn’t getting too downbeat over the winless run.
"We had a really good start to the season, we lost two in four days and there was a wee bit of noise around.
"We lost two games we didn’t deserve to lose, truth be told. We weren’t at our best but we didn’t deserve to lose the games.
"We’ve got a point here, a point in Oriel is normally a good result but I think if you analyse it over the piece, we deserved three."
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