Dundalk set for Mother of a Derby day
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The marketing team at Oriel Park have certainly had their thinking caps on this week and have come up with a whole host of promotions and activities for this Sunday's televised local derby.
The game being fixed for Mother's Day has set their creative juices into overdrive and they have promised free entry for any mothers attending as well as a free gift for them, a meet and greet with the players, and face painting for the youngsters. And for those intrepid types they can even participate in a half-time penalty shoot-out.
Meanwhile, on the eve of the Louth derby, Ian Foster spoke exclusively to extratime.ie about the upcoming game. The fact that Drogheda lost their opening game has not lulled him into a false sense of security.
“I don’t think it helps us in all honesty, as they’ll be desperate to put things right. It’s not nice to lose the first game of the season, especially at home. You’ve got to put it right the next week and that means they have to put it right here and we’ve got to be aware of that.”
Foster, who was in Terryland Park on Friday evening watching Galway United defeat Bray, believes that the game will fall into the familiar derby game routine.
“The lads have been well prepared this week. Derby games are tough, they’re never pretty to watch. The first twenty minutes will be very competitive, very high tempo. The team that uses the ball best will probably come out on top and in these games you’ve got to earn the right to play. It might take you an hour, but you’ve got to win the battle first.”
Foster states that a performance similar to the one last week at the Carlisle Grounds will not be repeated.
“It was definitely a better result than performance, but having said that to play like that and still get three points you have to take the positives out of it, but we can do so much better than that. I’m expecting us to pass it a lot better.
"In fairness to the players the pitch was terrible, but it was terrible for both sides and they handled it better than us. We got better as the game wore on, after probably 65 minutes we really imposed ourselves on the game and started creating chances. But we can be an awful lot better than that.”
The Lilywhites manager has now been accepted on to the FIFA Pro licence course and this has seemingly removed the last obstacle to their playing in the Europa League this season. The remaining piece of the jigsaw is where the game is to be played, Dundalk are still actively investigating the possibility of playing the game at Oriel Park which is great news for their loyal fans.
The game being fixed for Mother's Day has set their creative juices into overdrive and they have promised free entry for any mothers attending as well as a free gift for them, a meet and greet with the players, and face painting for the youngsters. And for those intrepid types they can even participate in a half-time penalty shoot-out.
Meanwhile, on the eve of the Louth derby, Ian Foster spoke exclusively to extratime.ie about the upcoming game. The fact that Drogheda lost their opening game has not lulled him into a false sense of security.
“I don’t think it helps us in all honesty, as they’ll be desperate to put things right. It’s not nice to lose the first game of the season, especially at home. You’ve got to put it right the next week and that means they have to put it right here and we’ve got to be aware of that.”
Foster, who was in Terryland Park on Friday evening watching Galway United defeat Bray, believes that the game will fall into the familiar derby game routine.
“The lads have been well prepared this week. Derby games are tough, they’re never pretty to watch. The first twenty minutes will be very competitive, very high tempo. The team that uses the ball best will probably come out on top and in these games you’ve got to earn the right to play. It might take you an hour, but you’ve got to win the battle first.”
Foster states that a performance similar to the one last week at the Carlisle Grounds will not be repeated.
“It was definitely a better result than performance, but having said that to play like that and still get three points you have to take the positives out of it, but we can do so much better than that. I’m expecting us to pass it a lot better.
"In fairness to the players the pitch was terrible, but it was terrible for both sides and they handled it better than us. We got better as the game wore on, after probably 65 minutes we really imposed ourselves on the game and started creating chances. But we can be an awful lot better than that.”
The Lilywhites manager has now been accepted on to the FIFA Pro licence course and this has seemingly removed the last obstacle to their playing in the Europa League this season. The remaining piece of the jigsaw is where the game is to be played, Dundalk are still actively investigating the possibility of playing the game at Oriel Park which is great news for their loyal fans.
