Horgan happy to survive late Mayo surge to progress

Finn Harps survived a late second-half surge from Mayo League in the first round of the EA Sports Cup to progress to the second round for a third consecutive season. 

Ollie Horgan’s side had a four-goal advantage approaching the hour mark when Brendan Lavelle started an unlikely turnaround that stopped at 4-3. 

Horgan watched his side go from cruise control to a crushing halt in the second half, surrendering 3 goals saying that the game came to the point of being on a knife edge for his side. 

“We were hanging on in the end, we went 4-0 up and we looked like we would go on to win comfortably and then there was a couple of mistakes and we were hanging on by a thread by the end.” 

He added, “We will look at it, we will take a few lessons from it, we were either excellent or terrible depending on the minute of the game your talking about.”

Speaking about the upcoming game down in Cobh on St. Patrick’s Day, he added that a few of his players may be forced to sit it out. 

“Paddy McCourt will certainly be a doubt, Eric Whelan will be out, the likes of Gareth Harkin, we don’t know yet, we will assess on Wednesday night,” he noted. 

He added that his players definitely needed that game tonight after a number of postponements due to the weather. “That game tonight will do us no harm in the long run.” 

On a final note, he pointed out that Cobh are flying. “They played two away games, one of them, Cabinteely, which is very difficult, and got a draw in Longford, who are a very strong side as well, so Cobh is always a hugely difficult place to go when we’re going well. 

"Now they're going well, and have put together a very very good side, so to get anything out of there, we need to be at the level we were at tonight for the first hour, if we show anything like the last half an hour, we won’t get anything out of it.”