Dundalk step up preparation with the scheduling of Derry and Bohs friendlies

Preparations are continuing around the League of Ireland ahead of the League restarting on July 31st with most teams now back in some sort of training.

Dundalk have announced that following on from a successful inter-squad 11v11 game held last week they will now step up their preparations and have pencilled in friendly fixtures against Derry City and Bohemians.

Derry will travel South to take on the Lilywhites on Friday afternoon in a game that will take place at Oriel Park. Meanwhile, the club have also confirmed that Bohemians will visit the County Louth side on Tuesday week.

With Vinny Perth’s team hoping to take part in European football later in the summer, the Dundalk boss feels these games are vital.

“We hope to add games beyond that but that’s all that we have confirmed at the minute,” said Perth. “It’s not that common to play teams in your own league but we feel it will be good preparation for Europe.”

With the players in jubilant mood having managed to complete their first game last week, all be it amongst themselves, things are beginning to look slightly more positive for the weeks ahead after a tough few months.

“It was their first time playing with each other in almost four months and it was a great workout, really good. We mixed the teams up. We trained really hard last week so for them to get through 60 minutes was really good.

“There’s a lot of things we need to work on. We created some chances but there’s definitely room for improvement and that’s what you want from these games.”

Dundalk have made a number of additions to their squad in recent days and new boys Nathan Oduwa, Josh Gatt and Stefan Colovic have slotted in without any issues. Colovic, in particular, scored in the recent training game only for it to be ruled out for offside, but he did manage to combine well with Sean Gannon for the game’s only goal as Lilo Lotefa struck home from close range.

“We need to see Stefan playing out wide a bit more,” said Perth. “On Friday we played him a bit narrower and he was very impressive. He linked up really well with Sean Gannon for the goal and those kinds of combinations will get better as we move on.”



In injury news, John Mountney continued his return from injury with an impressive performance while U19 defender Andrew Quinn came in instead of Sean Hoare, who alongside Patrick McEleney, sat out the game.

“It was John’s first game in a long, long time,” said Perth. “There was a bit of rustiness there but he got through it and it was the same with Sean Murray. I also thought Andrew looked like he belongs in the group, which is good. We have players coming through the system which is important.

“It was our first game back after four weeks of training,” he added. “Normally, we’d play a game before that but we just need to be careful. You can see around the world that when football came back a lot of injuries were picked up.

“We have a couple of niggles ourselves but that’s part and parcel of things and we still have a good bit of time before the season starts. Most of the heavy lifting is done. It’s just about improving combinations and things like that now.”

 



    About Gareth O'Reilly

    Gareth is the Editor of Extratime.ie. Gareth began as a normal reporter covering games all over Dublin before being asked to help out with behind the scene activities and eventually moving into the role of … View Full Profile