Frustrated Dave Rogers rues late refereeing call as St Patrick's Athletic progress

Finn Harps manager Dave Rogers admitted that he was a man with mixed emotions following his side’s 2-1 home defeat to St Patrick’s Athletic in the FAI Cup.

With the side’s level on 85 minutes, a quick throw-in was taken by Pat’s defender Anthony Breslin, which resulted in substitute Thomas Lonergan breaking through the Harps’ defence to score the match winner.

However, controversy arose with the home side claiming that the throw-in was theirs to take and that the linesman only raised the flag when the ball went back into play.

The incident resulted in Rogers being booked for his overzealous but, at the same time, understandable remonstrations.  

“To lose the game in such controversial circumstances at the end almost seems like an old cliché now in the League of Ireland,” a frustrated Rogers said after.

“I thought the boys nullified St Pat’s really well and worked so hard. We pressed them well and fought them in areas they thought we couldn’t go, but I’m still standing here with mixed emotions because of the end of the match.

“When Jon Daly . . . and fair play to Jon, he’s a great guy and an honourable man but when he and his players are coming up to me and saying, ‘Dave you’ve been done hard there, that was never our ball’, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

“I think the ref and the linesman were playing eyeball tennis with each other on whose ball it was. We just get caught out unfortunately and to concede so late is disappointing.”

The Harps boss further explains that it was not only the late goal, which was an issue during the match but that a lack of consistency was prevalent throughout the game in Ballybofey.

“I’m not going to stand here and blame people or accuse people, but what I look for and what we all look for in this game is consistency, especially at this level. I felt every time a Pat’s player went down it was a free, that wasn’t the case when a Harps player went down".

Despite a fine effort from his squad against one of the top teams in the League of Ireland, it cannot be ignored that the Donegal club were in the Premier Division last season and now sit second last in the second tier with only seven league wins in 30 matches.

But Rogers states that the list of injuries has been a major factor in that slide and he hopes his side can give “maximum effort” to finish the season strong.

“What we have to look at here in the club is that we’re down to the bare bones at the minute, we’ve got four players out for the rest of the season and Ryan Rainey has a three-match suspension. 

“But what it does do, it galvanises the group to show that lads can step up and show that they can handle pressure situations.

“For us, our work doesn’t stop, we want to finish as high up the table as we can. We’ve 18 points to play for and I want maximum effort to get those points.

“Looking at our season and the results not going our way, I put that down to a bit of naivety and nervousness from the players. Like, the majority of these lads have never played senior football and they deserve the opportunity, and we will stick with them.

“We don’t have the budget in this club to bring in the quality players, so what we do is bring in players that are local, players who want to come back to the club and, most of all, players who want to play for Finn Harps.

“That means we won’t win as many matches as we like, but these lads will get stronger and get better.”