We gave ourselves a mountain to climb - Kevin McHugh on poor start in FAI Cup

Finn Harps boss Kevin McHugh admitted the poor start to their 3-0 FAI Cup quarter-final defeat to Cork City ultimately cost them a chance of reaching the final four of the competition.

The Harps had the worst possible start as they failed to deal with a long ball forward and after good footwork from Evan McLaughlin, the visitors led inside 90 seconds.

And it was deja vu on ten minutes as another long kick bounced over the defence into the path of Sean Maguire, and the former Republic of Ireland striker poked home.

“You can’t hand chances like that to a team like that,” McHugh said after the game.

“It’s very unlike us because we’ve been defending well all year with long balls, no matter who we were playing, so that’s disappointing.

“I have to give the boys who made the errors huge credit for coming out of the wobble because it’s a lonely place to be on a football pitch when you go 2-0 down against a side like that, and I thought we fought really well to get back into the game.

“We definitely had a shout for a penalty. I’ve seen it back, and it’s a clear penalty and I thought the officials got a lot of stuff wrong.

“But when you give away two goals like that, it’s an uphill battle and it’s almost like damage limitations to get in at half-time and change it up a bit and go at them in the second half.

“Every long ball seemed to cause us bother and they could have been 3-0 up at half-time but I thought we finished the stronger for the last 20 minutes of the half.”

The hosts did settle in front of a good crowd in Finn Park, despite a heavy downpour for an hour of the game, and had chances to cut the deficit but couldn’t take them.

And eventually Cork got a third with a rare attempt in the second half.

“You can see the level Cork are at, they absorbed the pressure and managed the game really well.

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“We had moments in the game, and if it’s 0-0, would they be a bit more nervous and would things fall a bit better? Probably, but when you have that 2-0 cushion, they were throwing caution to the wind and things were falling for them.

“The moments in which we did create, we just didn’t take advantage and if we just got one goal back in the last half an hour, then we could have really pushed them in the last 10-15 minutes.

“Lorenzo pulls off a brilliant save and we have five men in the box, they have two and the ball falls to the feet of their man and he taps it home, so that’s the type of night it was.

“We just gave ourselves a mountain to climb at the start, but there were some really good individual performances throughout the squad that we need to take into Bray next week.”