WHEN THE EMAIL pinged this morning at 11 o’clock, it’s hard to know just what was going through the mind of the Finn Harps manager, Ollie Horgan.
It’s fair to assume, though, that his reaction might have been in stark contrast with those at Finn Park who will be welcoming bumper home gates for the visits of Derry City and Shamrock Rovers in the opening fortnight of the 2016 season.
The old venue will burst to its seams when the Candystrips and the Hoops roll into Ballybofey in March.
While the fixture list is certainly one that has soared the mercury around Navenny Street since this morning, it’s not likely that Horgan will have been dancing a jig as he glanced down the page.
The pragmatist in him would have wanted a kinder spin of the drum, although they could hardly have asked for a better fixture to get the blood boiling than the one that begins their first year back in the top flight.
On Friday March 4, the full-house signs will be posted and the RTÉ cameras will surely venture for the north-west derby.
One positive about the fixture list is that it will do the sales of season tickets no harm. If anything, it might even tempt a few more to purchase a stocking filler before Christmas.
Derry might have lost Patrick McEleney and Mark Timlin, but new manager Kenny Shiels – the former Kilmarnock boss – is believed to be in talks with Rory Patterson about a return to the Brandywell, while the recruitment of Harry Monaghan and Jordan Allen appear solid pieces of business.
Harps will battle not just with a limited budget, but with geography also proving problematic for Horgan in his talent search, not to mention the fact that their neighbours on either side, Derry and Sligo Rovers, can offer full-time football.
“We are prime candidates to get relegated,” Horgan bluntly observed last month when he appeared on Donegal Sport Hub’s podcast.
“You’re looking at the full-time sides and the budgets that they have. We’d love to be able to compete, but to compete will be a battle, on and off the pitch.”
On their last visit to the Premier Division, in 2008, Harps rolled the dice and played Russian roulette all at once.
A budget touching €1million euro was approved and the club went full-time, but they dismally dropped back into the First Division again, with crippling debts the club is still paying for.
In 2015, the playing budget was around €2,000 per week and even to double that sum will be a challenge for the Board at Finn Park.
So far, Horgan has 11 players signed up – including new faces in the form of Ryan McConnell and Ryan Curran – and with pre-season training underway on the second week of January will be eager to add to the roster after Christmas.
Bargain buys and loan signings appear the order of the day and Horgan might also hope for a foreign recruit, ala Wilfried Tagbo or Pat McCann from recent campaigns.
It will be, as Horgan reminds us so often, ‘a battle’ on many fronts.
Harps have already acknowledged that Finn Park is in need of a facelift and with the visits of Derry and Shamrock Rovers in the opening ten days of the new season, the match day organisers and event controllers will also have to hit the ground running, given that the eyes of the land will be upon them.
Everyone, from Ciaran Gallagher, the goalkeeper, to the vendors at the chip van inside the Chestnut Road gate, will be under more strain from the off and the honeymoon period in the top flight will be a short one.
Shamrock Rovers were last year’s third-placed team and had Damien Duff among their squad in 2015 and will hardly be obliging opponents when they make their way down the M1 on Monday March 14.
Sandwiching the opening home fixtures is a trip to Oriel Park, the home of the double winners, Dundalk, who lost just once this year and who scored 78 goals in the process, leaking only 23 at the other end.
The trip to Sligo Rovers, whose powers have drastically waned of late, and the subsequent home game against Longford Town may offer some respite, but there aren’t too many pins for Horgan to place in his calendar when he’s targeting the points needed to survive.
It could all fall back to that opening night and what a chance to put one over on the old enemy from the Maiden city.
Leaving aside the Ulster Tyre Cup games – the glorified friendlies of the 1980s and 90s – Harps have played Derry City 58 competitive times and won only five and two of those were in The Irish News Cup, which mainly featured reserve players.
Since Derry’s entry into the League of Ireland in 1985, Harps have beaten them only once in the League.
The moment is one of those caught-in-time pictures: The ball by Paddy McGrenaghan on the right flank; The first time cross by Pascal Vaudequin; The header by Donal O’Brien, in the 79th minute of their meeting on February 1 1998, to plant the ball in the bottom corner of the Town End net.
O’Brien is now the assistant manager to Shiels at Brandywell and will renew his rivalry with Horgan in March. The two were foes in the Ulster Senior League when Horgan was Fanad United boss and O’Brien was guiding Cockhill Celtic.
Their meeting now is in an arena unlike anything they faced before.
“These are big games,” Noel King said of the Harps-Derry derbies once.
“You can feel the tension in it. That is the level of rivalry that is there.
“People elsewhere in the League, Dublin for example, don’t believe what it means up there. The people are so passionate.”
Even if the start could have been kinder – especially with Kevin McHugh, Gareth Harkin and Michael Funston suspended for that opening game – in a perverse kind of way it might just be what Harps needed.
On the field and off it, the meeting with Derry City – and the latest chance to bury that wretched hoodoo – will give them a taste of what life will be like next year.
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