FINN HARPS were beaten 3-0 by double League champions Dundalk on Friday night at Oriel Park.
Paddy Barrett and Patrick McEleney scored for Stephen Kenny’s team while Ryan Curran put through his own goal on a night that ended with the desperate sight of Harps left-back Ciaran Coll being carried off on a stretcher after sustaining a knee injury.
Picture caption: The Finn Harps team in a huddle before Friday night’s game at Oriel Park. Picture by Gary Foy, newsandsportfiles
- Mounting injuries a real worry for Ollie Horgan
JUST when you begin to think that things can’t get any worse, that’s exactly when that’s exactly what happens.
On Thursay, Finn Harps manager Ollie Horgan said that the sight of midfielder Barry Molloy wearing a protective brace on his leg at training had ‘wrecked the week’.
Molloy sustained a knee injury against Derry City that is expected to keep him side-lined for around eight weeks, while Sean Houston, Josh Mailey and Michael Rafter are also on the long-term list with Packie Mailey sitting out Friday’s game in Dundalk owing to a knee problem.
The sight Ciaran Coll being carted off on a stretcher was one that surely had Horgan looking to the heavens and wondering: ‘Not again?’
The extent of Coll’s injury has yet to be determined, but the St Johnston man seems certain to miss a couple of months at a minimum.
Coll is Harps’ vice captain, one of their more experienced players (Friday’s was his 175th for the club) and one of the certainties to step up to Premier Division level.
His absence comes as a massive blow to Harps, whose list of unavailable players is beginning to resemble a small hospital, little more than a week into the new season.
- Gallagher unavailability highlights part-time scrap
LAST Monday, Ciaran Gallagher started a new job in Pramerica in Letterkenny.
Having given up on full-time football, the bills still need to be paid. His work commitments meant that he was unable to travel to Dundalk last night to face the champions.
“It probably puts things in perspective that we couldn’t get a player off today to play. He had to work to earn his corn,” was how Ollie Horgan put it after the 3-0 defeat.
His goalkeeper is not alone. Michael Funston has previously been forced to miss games that have been pencilled in at short notice for the same reasons.
Most of the teams in the Premier Division are full-time, but while Pat Fenlon, the Shamrock Rovers manager, will have been preparing for Monday’s game against Harps since Friday night, Horgan will be in the classroom at St Eunan’s College until Monday afternoon before making his way to Ballybofey.
It’s just another of the difficulties that face a side already challenged by financial and geographical constraints.
- Richard Brush signing a Godsend
RICHARD Brush certainly went down as a surprise signing when his capture was confirmed by Horgan at a public forum in the Clanree Hotel.
It was hardly a secret up to that point that Brush had been in training with the club, but it was a move that did raise eyebrows, given that Ciaran Gallagher had kept 19 clean sheets last season and the goalkeeping slot was one position Harps didn’t appear to need adding to.
However, it already looks a good piece of business by Horgan with the former Sligo Rovers and Shamrock Rovers goalkeeper making his debut in Gallagher’s absence on Friday night.
Brush’s experience and quality meant that Gallagher’s unavailability wasn’t the ordeal that it might otherwise have been and Harps can be safe in the knowledge that Brush provides more-than-adequate backup.
Indeed, it would surely not beyond the bounds that Brush could well stake a claim for regular inclusion now.
- Dundalk already on the three-in-a-row road
ONLY three teams – Shamrock Rovers (1984–87), Waterford United (1968-70) and Cork United (1941-43) – have won three successive League of Ireland titles.
Only two games into the season, Dundalk already look a good bet to add their name to that list.
Richie Towell might well have departed for Brighton and Hove Albion, but Stephen Kenny’s team remains a formidable opponent, as shown by the fact that he could rest Stephen O’Donnell, Brian Gartland and John Mountney for Friday’s game.
Last season, every Dundalk outfield player scored at least once and already this year four of them have bagged goals, including Patrick McEleney, a closed-season signing from Derry City.
Kenny knows McEleney from his Derry days and will hope the 23-year-old can reach his potential at Oriel Park.
- Harps will struggle – but are up for the fight
WHILE Dundalk will be trotting out to Tony Britten’s spine-tingling UEFA Champions League anthem this summer and already appear a good bet to do so next year, Ollie Horgan was not being too downbeat when he said that there would be ‘a lot of places’ between Dundalk and Harps.
After the euphoria of the 2-1 win over Derry City, Friday night felt like a reality check of sorts.
They can draw some comfort from the fact that there are others in the League who will find Oriel Park a much greater ordeal and will be on the receiving end of bigger beatings at the Carrick Road.
That said, Harps will be in a relegation scrap, something their manager has been at pains to note.
“I don’t want to sound too negative – and I think people aren’t happy with me being ‘too pessimistic – but, look, it is what it is. It’s a fact,” Horgan said.
“It’s not me playing it down and saying ‘we are going to struggle’. We are going to struggle, financially and football wise. On and off the pitch, the odds are stacked against us, but we’ll fight and the players, to their credit, they gave everything, as they have from day one.”
The willingness to fight to the bitter end could be their greatest trump card over the next seven months and they will not have left Dundalk with the heads deflated given that they did show plenty of heart, spirit and endeavour.
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