2 days Ago By Leon Wobschall
Did you know with a Digital subscription to Yorkshire Post, you can get access to all of our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Phillips dropped to the bench and was an unused substitute in the weekend draw at Wigan Athletic after it was revealed he was late for a team meeting. He did not feature in the match-day squad versus the Grecians and neither did Donovan Pines, although his absence was down to fitness thinking.
Advertisement Advertisement Hourihane said: "Phillo was obviously the issue that has been out there. "Me and him had a really good chat around lunchtime (on Tuesday) when he came into train. He apologised and it’s water under the bridge and case closed.
"He trained well and I said: ‘Come in, Thursday, work hard and work hard on Friday and you will be in contention for the weekend and it’s simple as that. "We had a good conversation. He apologised for what happened and we all move on from that.
Advertisement Advertisement "Donovan is a completely different situation. We feel like he’s been rusty and struggling for rhythm. He was sat on the bench against Wigan at the weekend.
"If he’d sat on the bench again, it would have been more missed training. So I just felt he needed to get a couple of good days into him and hopefully that will bring a little bit of sharpness into him because he’s been stop-start with injuries and sitting on the bench is no good to him.” A late winner from Josh Magennis gave Exeter the points after Stephen Humphrys had cancelled out Ryan Trevitt's early opener.
It extended the Reds winless streak to six matches as their homesickness continued. Advertisement Advertisement Hourihane, still awaiting his first win in temporary change, added: "I thought the performance was okay. We obviously gave a poor goal away to start the game off and it’s an uphill task (after).
It was a similar start to the game against Cambridge. "I thought for spells in the second half, we played all right/ But ultimately, we gave a poor goal again. They are good players who play well in spells and then kill themselves with poor errors.
“That's been the story of the season and especially my time over the four games as well.” Barnsley visit champions-elect Birmingham City this weekend..
