Ciaran Coll of Finn Harps has his eyes on the ball as he clears the danger against Longford Town.
BY CHRIS MCNULTY
CIARAN Coll, the team’s vice captain, has urged Finn Harps to put Saturday night’s defeat by Longford Town behind them and begin the second quarter of the season on a winning note in Waterford on Friday.
Harps make the long journey to the south-east following an opening quarter to the campaign that produced a mixed bag of results. Waterford’s start has been spluttering and, following Saturday’s frustrating loss, Coll says getting back to winning ways is the only cure.
“Waterford will be a very tough game, especially down there,” he told the Donegal News.
“We need to bounce back.
“It’s very disappointing to lose like that. We came up here thinking positively before the game. Things didn’t go to positively, but games go like that sometimes and we just want to get a win now in Waterford.”
In the absence of captain Kevin McHugh – who hasn’t featured since the season’s opening night – it has been Coll who has been the stand-in skipper. The 22-year-old St Johnston man considers it an honour.
He said: “It’s great that it (the captaincy) passed down from Kevin to me. I was reading the last day in the paper where Johnny Dunleavy at Cork is the second youngest captain in the Premier. To be captain of Finn Harps at a young age is brilliant.”
Coll thought the penalty from which David O’Sullivan netted the only goal of the game to have been ‘harsh’ but said there will be some equally harsh analysis when the video is played this week.
He said: “The build-up play before the penalty was disappointing too. I was disappointed with myself and Haverty got in behind us as well. We have to learn from mistakes like that and make them right for Waterford.
“We played well enough in the second half. Longford had to sit deep at times because we had so much pressure on them. They started to lump balls in on top of us then at the end.”
Coll has already played over 100 games for Harps, but has been given a slightly different role this year, with Horgan using himself and James Doherty as ‘wing-backs’, given a licence to get forward when possible.
Coll said: “It’s hard work, but it has to be done. You have to do what the manager tells you.
“We started off well this year. Hopefully we can keep picking up points. I think we have a better squad this year. Everyone is working really hard and trying to push it on.”
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