McGowan hopes to make home games count

BALLYBOFEY United veteran Shaun ‘Wizzy’ McGowan was pleased that his team earned a morale-boosting win last weekend and he’s hoping they can build on that now as they prepare to face Convoy Arsenal in the Temple Domestic Appliances Division One.

Last year Ballybofey were just a few points shy of reaching the promotion play-offs in the First Division.

However, it’s been a poor start to the league campaign for PH Bonar’s Ballybofey this time around.

They have lost all three of their league matches and could be staring at a relegation battle unless they get things moving quickly.

They did manage to defeat Rathmullan 3-0 in the Ulster Cup last Sunday and McGowan hopes that acts as a turning point in their campaign.

Convoy have only won one of their four matches so they haven’t been setting the world alight either.

However, they will be up for the battle on Sunday in the 1pm kick-off.

Ballybofey have home advantage at Dreenan, and McGowan (40) hopes that helps their cause.

“We have to make our home games count,” said the former Finn Harps star.

“We’ve only had the one this season in the league, but we lost that to Castlefin Celtic.

“Looking at Convoy Arsenal up next, we know they got promoted last year and they are a decent side.

“We’ve got no doubts that they’ll be going into this looking for a positive result.

“They’ll come up here, try to play, and we’ve got lads that will try and do the same.

“Convoy always has that physical element to them, and they’ve got some good young players coming through the youth set-up.

“It’s a derby match, and on that day, anything can happen.

“The boys that played against Rathmullan have their name on the back of the shirt now, and it’ll be a good selection headache for PH Bonar to deal with.

“It’ll be an exciting game, and hopefully the conditions will be a bit better, because it can be breezy here even at the best of times.”

The pressure was off to a degree last week for Ballybofey and they came away with an excellent 3-0 win against a Rathmullan side who had been motoring well.

The fact that striker Daithi McMahon was back after his GAA commitments with Sean McDermott’s in Monaghan certainly helped.

McMahon showed his class by bagging a hat-trick.

The team sensed it was a good chance to get the monkey off their back and claim a win and they delivered.

“We spoke about it before the game, and we made a few changes,” McGowan stated.

“It was all about getting a victory of any kind on the board, and the clean sheet was a nice bonus.

“It was also about cup progression, and to get that first win in a while was very important.

“It’s definitely a confidence thing. It’s a habit of winning or losing and unfortunately we were in the latter. We had to get out of it somehow, we’ve done that and hopefully we can kick on with some big league games coming up.”