Athlone Town 0 - 1 Finn Harps

• Aidan O'Donnell
• Sun, Aug 21 2011


Finn Harps bounced back from last week’s defeat to Limerick to pick up their third win from four games against Athlone Town on Saturday night in the midlands.

Kevin McHugh hit the solitary goal of the game on twenty minutes that ensures just a point now separates Harps from Athlone at the lower end of the Airtricity League First Division table.

Harps, without Tommy Bonnar, Mark Forker, Marc Brolly and Ciaran Coll from their match-day squad, continued their impressive run of form that has lifted them to within touching distance of a number of sides like Saturday night’s opponents and Mervue United, who were defeated at home to Cork City at the weekend. Speaking last night to the Donegal News, Harps’ Director of Football Felix Healy said the decision to leave out those aforementioned players was merely to have a look at the loan signings brought in last month.

He said: “A lot of guys were left out on Saturday night but it was just a case of we wanted to look at other players. We know what all those players can do, we brought in the four lads there from Sligo so there was point taking them in if we weren’t going to look at them.

“From now on though, we’ll be playing our best team. We’ve had a look at a lot of players these last few weeks and it’s been good, but we want to finish the season strong now. We’ve had a couple of good results and our aim is to catch the teams above us and finish as high as we can.”

Harps, who are not in action this weekend, will come back in two weeks time when they welcome promotion-chasing Monaghan United to Ballybofey, a match Healy and manager Peter Hutton should have a near-full strength panel for.

Saturday night’s win also saw Harps keep a third clean sheet in four outings, with several teenagers shining at the back in the absence of Packie Mailey, Keith Cowan and Hutton himself, who is currently out with a hamstring injury.

Healy added: “It was a difficult game, but the boys did ok and it was good to get another positive result on the road. When Kevin scored the goal early on they (Athlone) then started to just lump the ball up front and didn’t really seem to want to play football, which seems to be in a lot of cases in this league.

“We had five nineteen year-olds, one eighteen-year old and a seventeen year-old came off the bench, there is a lot of good young kids coming through here, but I suppose it’s about knowing when to play them.”

Athlone Town: Michael Schlingermann; Mark Walsh, Bobby Tier, Paul Danaher, Jamie Carr; Dave Ryan, Damien Rushe, Stephen Relihan, Declan Fallon; Wayne Colbert; Mark Sherlock. Subs: Tommy Barrett, Joe Woods, Jason Hughes, Noel McGee, Gary Higgins, Scott Gaynor

Finn Harps: Ciaran Gallagher; Martin Redmond, Paddy McLaughlin, Aaron O’Hagan, JP Gallagher; Mark McGoldrick, Barry O’Mahoney, Gary Curran, Kevin Devenney; Kevin McHugh, Stephen O’Donnell.
Subs: Chris Patton, Shane McGinty, Hugh McFadden, Gareth Harkin, Blaine Curtis.

Referee: Conor Fitzgerald