Although the Liam Buckley-managed side drew on the opening weekend against Waterford and followed that result up with a home defeat at the hands of UCD, Sporting Fingal have won six consecutive games since then. Last Saturday night Sporting Fingal won 3-1 away to Longford Town, but most significantly of all they preceded that trip to Flancare Park with a highly-impressive one-nil win against Shelbourne - Sporting’s Eamon Zayed struck for the winner against Shels and was on the mark once more against Longford and will take some watching on Friday night.
The form of Sporting Fingal, in the wake of Limerick’s poor performance against Waterford last weekend, will make the Dublin outfit red-hot favourites.
Limerick FC manager Pat Scully was as disappointed as anyone by the display of his side at Jackman Park against their Munster rivals: “It was disappointing; we just didn’t play.
“We started the game off completely wrong and we just were not aggressive enough. That’s something we have to get away from. We need to be braver right from the start.
“Stephen Henderson’s Waterford side are a big physical team and we were never aggressive enough against them. They bullied us in a lot of departments. Personally I think it was a big game and the lads froze a little bit. Over the 90 minutes we didn’t deserve to win the game, but we are way better than that.
“Playing against a team like Waterford you have to compete, win the battle and then get the ball down and play. We didn’t do that and it cost us. But I can tell you that no one is more disappointed with the result than the players themselves.”
Pat Scully has been holding the reins in Limerick for four weeks now and even though he acknowledges that the lack of a proper pre-season has cost his side he refuses to blame a lack of fitness for the defeat to Waterford.
“I wouldn’t use a lack of fitness as an excuse,” Pat Scully told Leader Sport this week.
“We’ve a lot of work done with the players and from a fitness point of view we’re definitely improving, but I wouldn’t use that as a reason for the defeat. We didn’t play, we were not aggressive enough and we dropped too deep. We got punished for that and we deserved to get punished.
“We’ve lost three league games now against UCD, Shels and Waterford who are all in the top four. We need to improve on the mental aspect of playing these big teams. We need to realise that we’re good enough to play against and beat these teams. Mentally you have to be brave enough to go after these teams and not be happy when the game is nil-all.”
And, despite the burgeoning reputation of Sporting Fingal Pat Scully believes that his young squad are capable to getting a result this weekend: “Sporting Fingal have good players and they are on a really good league run, but we’ve got players just as good. There’s no reason why we can’t go there and get a result. Fingal have nothing that we should be frightened of - we’ve a group of players who are easily as good as theirs.
“We’ve a good squad, we need to brush up on a few things, Friday night was disappointing, but the lads will learn from the experience.
“The most important thing is that we need to be braver and from the very first whistle we need to go out there and play.”
It is interesting to note the degree to which Fingal County Council have rowed in behind the Sporting Fingal project.
The club was founded as recently as 2007 with the original concept for the club actually created by Fingal County Council as part of a long-term development plan for soccer in that area of Dublin.
It was also recently confirmed that Fingal County Council intend to build a 3,000 all-seater stadium in Lusk along with state of the art training facilities.
That centre will represent the home of Lusk United, but it will also be made available to Sporting Fingal when the facility is completed in 2011.
Imagine a local council committed to providing facilities for a local soccer team? Wonders will never cease.
Brian McDonnell
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