Longford Town -v- Mervue United

• Deniese O'Flaherty
• Sat, Apr 17 2010


Longford Town will be hoping to finally pick up a much needed win when they take on Mervue Utd at Flancare Park this evening (kick-off 7.30pm).

Since their opening day victory over Finn Harps the Town have picked up just one point and have lost their last four league games.

Individual errors have proved costly in three of their last four games but last weekend in Turner’s Cross they looked solid throughout and were the better side for much of the first half. However they didn’t put away the chances they created and came away empty handed

Manager Tony Cousins hopes his players can replicate that performance against Mervue this evening: He said: “We looked a lot more solid. If we can play like we did against Cork and build on that it gives us a great base to go on. We will improve. There are a lot of positives we can take out of the game. I was gutted for the players because they deserved something out of the game. We need to get one or two wins to give us that bit of confidence.”

Cousins was dealt a blow last weekend in the warm-up when defender and Captain Philip Byrne pulled up with a recurrence of his calf injury. Byrne hasn’t trained all week and will miss this evening’s game. For the second week in a row Thomas Hyland should take his place. Other than that, Cousins has a full-strength squad to choose from. He will probably stick with the same team that lost in Cork.

Mervue who are just behind Town in the table have several players missing for the game. Damien O’Rourke is unavailable while Darren Young is suspended. With the club’s youth team in the FAI Youth Cup semi-final manager Tom French will be without Dan Cunningham, Enda Curran, Pat Hoban and Mike Elwood. On the plus side Gerry Burke, David O’Dowd and Nicky Curran should all return from injury.

Venue: Flancare Park
Kick-off: 7.30pm
Referee: Stuart Templeman (Kerry)
Extratime.ie prediction: Home win