Preview: Sporting Fingal vs Dundalk

• Turlough Kelly
• Fri, Apr 04 2008




Dundalk will be defending an unbeaten league record when they travel to Morton Stadium, Santry for tonight's fixture against Sporting Fingal (kick-off 7.45 p.m.) John Gill's side have accumulated three successive and convincing victories since their scoreless stalemate away to Shelbourne on opening night. This latest visit to the capital will engender few terrors by comparison, but complacency is an insidious vice in First Division football and Dundalk will need to bring what fashionable transatlantic nomenclature would doubtless term their ""A-game" to Santry if their lost-column is to continue registering a zero.

Their opponents will be aiming to dispel the thesis, for which the body of corroborative evidence grows larger by the game, that they have found their natural level in the First Division, and that it's somewhere below the serious contenders. Last week's defeat to Waterford Untited was by no means humiliating, but dispiritngly comprehensive. Nonetheless, while Liam Buckley's outfit remain a work emphatically in progress, their level of progress and cohesion is already somewhat in advance of what might have been expected given their arctically cold start.

Buckley enjoys the privilege of selecting from a sizeable squad largely unravaged by injury for tonight's game, while Dundalk will also be at something approaching full-strength, although regular 'keeper Chris Bennion is unavailable due to suspension and will be replaced by understudy Aaron Shanahan. Robbie Doyle will presumably return to spearhead the Fingal attack after serving a suspension of his own.

Tonight's game represents the inaugural fixture between these two clubs but with both drawing deeply from the Dublin & district talent pool, there will be no lack of familiarity between the players on duty. Dundalk's superior pedigree and organisation establish them as favourites, but Fingal's swift, flexible and fluid forward movement could well swamp the Louth side's experienced but somewhat immobile rearguard. A home win is a very real possibility.