OLLIE HORGAN WATCHED Bray Wanderers in pre-season and was taken by what he saw.
The Finn Harps manager was in the vicinity and took the chance to witness the Seagulls in the flesh.
Bray are one of those sides tipped to be in the mix for the places in the bottom half of the standings, but that bitter Saturday evening, Horgan was impressed as Bray overcame St Patrick’s Athletic 3-1 in the Leinster Senior Cup.
“Bray have loads of experience in their squad and have been fixtures in the Premier Division for a good number of years at this stage,” Horgan said this week, ahead of Friday night’s meeting of the teams in Ballybofey.
“They may not have made the best of starts to the season, but they showed recently against Sligo Rovers how dangerous a side they can be.
“Bray are a full-time side and I saw them up in the Carlisle Grounds on Saturday night and while they got beaten, they possibly could have been one or two goals up.
“It’s difficult when you have Bray who are full-time, but it’s great to be there. It’s just if we could put points on the board as opposed to performances without points. That would be a better help.”
Bray have just four points on the board, three fewer than Harps, who have a chance to put a little daylight between the teams this week.”
Horgan saw Bray lose 2-0 to Bohemians last week, but their 4-0 triumph over Sligo Rovers was perhaps a better reminder of their talents.
Harps have had a promising, if somewhat frustrating start to their own campaign. The two defeats of the last seven days, the 1-0 loss at Galway last Friday and Monday’s 2-1 defeat at home to St Patrick’s Athletic saw Harps leave feeling a tad hard done by.
Manager Horgan is hopeful that Harps can begin now to chalk points on the board again.
“There were a lot of good performances out there, but we didn’t get any points out of it,” he said.
“It’s like a moral victory, but they won’t keep you in the Division. We’d prefer to play poorly and get a draw or a win.
“I think the people that were there on Monday can see the honesty from our lads. Maybe we lack that little bit of quality, but that comes at a cost.
“But we certainly don’t lose out in terms of workrate and honesty, it’s just if we could cut out the couple of mistakes and maybe take our chances at the other end, then we might be able to bridge the gap a bit more.
“Look, I can’t fault them and we’ll move on to Friday night now.”
Horgan will give fitness tests to Damien McNulty, Dave Scully and Ethan Boyle – all of whom sustained knocks on Monday – and he remains without the injured Josh Mailey, Raymond Foy, Michael Rafter and Barry Molloy.
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