Preview: Douglas Hall vs Drogheda United

• Gareth Penrose
• Fri, Jun 06 2008




On Friday night, Douglas Hall will look to slay a giant in Irish domestic football and knock league champions Drogheda United out of the FAI Ford Cup (Turner's Cross, 7.45pm). To aid their cause, Paul Doolin will be without almost half of his squad as the Drogs look to win their first FAI Cup game since the 2005 final.

Despite this, Doolin believes that his squad possesses the quality to cope. "We're down to the bare bones, but we still have a lot of quality. Sami (Ristila) I thought did very well, played some great passes the other night and Eamon (Zayed) looked good too."

On Friday night's opponents, Doolin admitted that his side will have to be on top of their game to beat the Munster Senior League side. "They're a very good side and we're preparing for this game just like we would for any other. When you see the number of teams at our level who have gone out to so-called lower teams, we really need to be alert. It'll be tricky, we know that, but I believe that when we play to the best of our ability we can beat anyone."

United could be without up to 12 first team players, including Brian Shelley and Paul Keegan, both of whom picked up injuries on Saturday night. And Doolin is looking forward to the mid-season break, saying "We want to get through the game without picking up any more injuries, then we can enjoy the break."

Douglas Hall manager CJ Harrington has said that it will be an honour to come up against a genuine Irish football legend when his side face Drogheda United.

The Munster Senior League side are hoping to follow-on from last season's FAI Ford Cup heroics when they knocked out high flying Cobh Ramblers, but Harrington says that this season's task will be much tougher, especially given the credentials of the Drogheda United manager.

"It's a great opportunity to play against the current eircom League of Ireland champions", he said. "I watched them in action against Cobh last week and they were superb. Paul Doolin is a League of Ireland legend - he's the Ryan Giggs of Ireland. He was a great player and he's a great manager.

"We beat Cobh [in 2007] and it was months again before they were beaten. But the top teams - the Drogheda's, Bohemians, Cork City's - are a different class. We don't doubt for a minute that we are up against it.

"We fancied ourselves going into the matches against Cobh and Limerick last season. We knew all of the Cobh players because they all came from the Munster Senior League. We knew that we were capable of beating Cobh, but we know that we're not as good as Drogheda.

"There is a big gap between the top sides in the Premier Division and the teams in the First Division, so we're aware that it is going to be very difficult to cause an upset."

Douglas Hall qualified for this season's FAI Ford Cup after making it to the final of the FAI Intermediate Cup, which they lost to Rockmount.

Harrington says that making progress in the FAI Ford Cup would mean a lot to the local area, which has supplied all of the club's players.

"All of our players have been with the club since they were 8 or 9 years old", he says. "They have all graduated from our schoolboy section and we are very proud of that. It's not a club policy to have no imports, it's just worked out that way. We had a six-year period where we had a lot of success at underage level and the current senior team has three or four players from each of those teams. We don't have any senior player over the age of 25; we have nothing approaching a veteran."

The game kicks off at 19:45 in Turner’s Cross.