BY MATTHEW WILSON
FINN Harps defender Conor Tourish is hoping that they can repeat last week’s performance against UCD when they travel to face Cobh Ramblers this Friday night.
Kevin McHugh’s outfit bagged their first three points of the league campaign in their last outing against the Students courtesy of a 2-1 win at Finn Park.
It was Finn Harps’ first league victory over UCD since 2019 so they’ll be pleased to see the back of this unwanted record and Tourish expressed that it was great for the group to get off the mark.
“It was a good result. It’s been a few years since we beat them in the league, it’s always tough games against them.
“A win in the second game of the season is good because sometimes if you leave it too long to get the first win, it seems to get harder to come by so it was a great result.
“It was a hard fought win, one of them where you were digging it out at the end. UCD is a good team so it was always going to be that way and we were delighted to get the three points.”
The Navenny Street Club lost out in their league opener to Athlone Town the week prior, suffering a 2-1 defeat to Ian Ryan’s side.
The meeting with UCD was similar in the sense that Finn Harps took an early lead however, this time they responded well to this.
Following Shaunie Bradley’s opening goal, McHugh’s men maintained their pressure on William O’Connor’s outfit, refusing them opportunities to claw their way back into the game which was pleasing for Tourish.
“I think against Athlone whenever we scored the first goal we sat off a bit then, we didn’t go after them when we probably should’ve.
“We let them back into the game and we didn’t have too many chances after that. If we’re being honest, we deserved to get beat in Athlone to be fair.
“Against UCD, we had chances to go two or three ahead after that. Obviously we went 2-0 up eventually but we kept our foot on the gas and put the pressure on them.
“We learned from the Friday before in Athlone that when you have a team like that, you have to keep going after them. You can’t just sit back and invite the pressure onto you.”
The Finn Park residents continued to pursue the crucial second goal following Bradley’s effort, coming close on several occasions.
It finally arrived just after the hour mark in Ballybofey, with Tourish himself firing home a spectacular volley that his manager would’ve been proud of himself back in his playing career.
“Those ones don’t come around too often, not for me anyway”, Tourish joked. “It’s great to help out at that end of the pitch too, not just at the defensive side of things as I enjoy that side of it as well.
“People might say it’s a fluke but it’s nice to score with your feet the odd time too I suppose for me.”
Six new arrivals came in the door at Finn Park in the winter months in the form of Bernardo Monteiro, Perrault Tokam, Nathan Lumingo, Daniel Lacerda, Alex Fanle and Temiloluwa Ajibola.
Tokam and Fanle were in from the start against The Students last time out and produced two very good displays for the side.
All of the new signings have had time to integrate themselves into the fold and have a decent pre-season under their belt which the Letterkenny native feels has helped them to settle in quickly.
“Sometimes it can take time when you’re coming into a different league, different environment, different culture but a lot of the boys have been in since before Christmas and I think that’s helped them.
“It’s not as if they’re landing in the last couple of weeks, trying to hit the ground running as soon as the league starts. They’ve had the pre-season and the couple of weeks before Christmas which has helped them so it’s great to see and long may it continue with the rest of them.”
Apart from these six new faces, the Finn Park residents have retained the majority of last season’s squad which is a boost as there can usually be quite an overhaul of incomings and outgoing at the club each season.
The Finn Harps defender stated that this is the most settled squad from one season to the next during his time at the club and feels that it’s a huge positive for Finn Harps if this continues to occur.
“For me anyway it’s probably the biggest group of players that has stayed from the season before. It’s a good sign too because we knew from before the end of last season that some of the boys had signed for next year.
“We knew we had the same kind of group. When the group is as young as it is, it’s good to get them ready for a couple of years because the experience from last year will stand to them throughout this year.
“Going forward it’s a good thing. If that keeps happening year on year then it’ll just benefit the whole club.”
Next up for Kevin McHugh’s outfit is a trip to St Colman’s Park this Friday night for a meeting with Cobh Ramblers.
Finn Harps haven’t won away at Cobh Ramblers since 2018 when a Mikey Place spot-kick earned the side all three points on their route to securing promotion back to the top flight.
Speaking to the Donegal News, the Finn Harps defender discussed that the group will be making the long trip to Cork in hope of replicating the level of performance they produced last time out in search of getting a positive outcome from the contest.
“Anytime we’ve gone down there it’s been difficult, the last few times I’ve been down there we haven’t performed well.
“Going off last week, we want to get another positive result down there. We want to give another good account of ourselves and hopefully get a better result than the last few times we’ve been down there as it’s not an easy place to go.
“They’ve a good squad but at the same time I think we’re going in the right direction as well. It’s just about going down there, trying to put in another performance and working as hard as we did last Friday.”
