Finn Harps’ search for a first win of the season goes on after losing a thrilling encounter at home to Cork City. Harps saw Caolon McAleer’s early goal cancelled out by a header from Conor McCarthy before Mark Coyle put his side back in the lead, on
Finn Harps’ search for a first win of the season goes on after losing a thrilling encounter at home to Cork City.
Harps saw Caolon McAleer’s early goal cancelled out by a header from Conor McCarthy before Mark Coyle put his side back in the lead, only for a Gearoid Morrissey strike to level things again before the interval.
Morrissey grabbed another after the restart with Graham Cummins adding his sides fourth of the afternoon before Raff Cretaro made it a tense finish.
To sum up the game in short Ollie Horgan simply put it, “No points, is probably the long and short about it.”
“We can take some great positives out of it, we scored three against Cork, we didn’t get a sniff against them for years, I think Ryan Curran scored down in Cork a few years ago, but that may be the only goal we have scored in the last 5 or 6 years against them,” he added.
“To score three and still lose is probably cruel but we couldn’t defend properly and we paid the price.”
The Finn Harps boss was pleased his side netted from open play having failed in their first 5 matches but noted that defending set pieces is something they will have to work on.
“We scored three tonight from open play but got undone by set piece after set piece.”
“At one stage at 4-2 down, Karl Sheppard had a couple of chances to make it 5 and then it could be open season but to be fair to our lads, they rallied and Raff (Cretaro) got a late goal which set up a tense 10 minutes but Cork defended better than we did to their credit,” he added.
“And to be fair to Gearoid Morrissey’s two strikes, they were worthy to win any game.”
Horgan noted that a good performance is all for nothing if the end result is 0 points and he would prefer his side win ugly.
“There were (some good performances) to put it that way to you, but we’d much prefer to play brutal in a brutal game and pick up something be it a point or more,” he said.
“We played very well, quite open at times, we went for it to try and win the game,” he added.
After playing FIVE games in 15 days, Harps have a week to rest up for their game away at UCD.
Horgan noted that all games in the league are big games and he doesn’t buy into the notion that his upcoming opponents will be in danger come the end of the season.
“People feel that it is between us and UCD but I’m not sure UCD will be down there, they’re a damn good side, we know that from last year in the First Division,” he said.
“They beat us twice, and I don’t think any other team best us twice while in the First Division.”
“I think they might surprise a few teams and may not be down where people expect them to be,” he added.
