Cappry Park return helping Cappry Rovers to a good start in the league

Cappry Rovers have had a bright start to the season in Division 1, and boss Jamie Doherty feels the return to Cappry Park has made life easier for the club.

Back at their home for the first time in three seasons, after the pitch was levelled out, it has eased their thoughts logistically and helped their focus on matchdays.

And with four home wins from four in the league so far this season, it has shown that the return to base has made a difference for the side who only avoided relegation via the play-offs last year. 

“We’ve got off to a good start and people might laugh, but our main aim is getting safe first.

“We’ve nearly won as many games now as we did last season, we only won six, and we’re on five already.

“The Finn Valley was great, but we’re back at home, and it makes a real difference. Everything is there where it’s supposed to be, and if you forget something, there’s always a spare in the clubhouse.

“The boys are happier back playing at our own place, it’s our home and that’s it.

“The pitch is great now, and it’s a credit to everyone at the club. It probably took a year longer than we thought, but it was worth the wait. We thought it would only be one season, but we had bad weather last year, so there was nothing we could do about it. Maybe in the long run, that was the best thing that could have happened.

“We were very lucky that we had 18 league games in the Finn Valley over the two years, and the local businesses were really good, we had sponsors for each game so that was a massive help.”

Cappry have a fairly young team, mixed with the experience of the likes of captain Aaron Kelly, Michael Carroll, Mickey Lafferty, Paddy McNulty and Brendan McLaughlin.

Barrie McGhee played for Ballybofey United last season and has joined this year, while Donegal county panellist Luke McGlynn has been available a lot more this year.

Peter Sweeney and Seaghan McCormick joined the Finn Harps Academy, and Matthew McGeehan and Shaun Ryan have long-term cruciate injuries, but other than that, they have had good numbers so far this season.

The Gaelic Under-21 Championship has caused headaches for a couple of managers, but Doherty admits they haven’t been impacted too badly.

“We haven’t had any bother with that yet so far with Glenfin, they’ve had their games on Saturday, and then they’d play with us on the Sunday. MacCumhaills have clashed a couple of times, so we’ve missed the likes of Shaun McMenamin and Darragh Boyle.

“We’re very young, we have a couple of experienced players, but some of them younger lads are that year older now and they’re a bit more used to senior football.

“Some of them have been in the team since they were 15 and 16, and they’re 3-5 years into it now.”

It’s a local derby this weekend for Cappry, as they make the short journey to Dreenan to face Ballybofey United.

The pair met in the league twice last year, after Ballybofey returned to Division 1, and it was Ballybofey who came out on top with a 4-1 win in the Finn Valley, while the pair drew 2-2 at Dreenan as Oran Gallen hit a late equaliser for the hosts.

But a win would take Cappry on to 19 points, just three off last year’s total, and Doherty admits they are still looking at avoiding that relegation play-off that they were in last year.

“We won a relegation play-off last year, and teams probably would’ve expected us to be one of the favourites to be near the bottom. But we’ve won our four home games so far, which is massive, and we picked up a good win in Rathmullan and drew with Swilly. We were well beaten in Castlefin to be fair.

“We have this one and then Swilly again, which puts us to the halfway mark of the season, so we’ll see where we’re at then. We just want to get to that 22-24 point mark.

“That first aim was to make sure we weren’t in the play-off, but after that game I spoke to the lads and said we can’t end up in that situation again. 

“The first day against them in the Finn Valley, they were the better team and we had no complaints. We were 2-0 up in Dreenan, and they got a couple of late goals to draw.

“They got four points off us last year, and they were probably good value for that too.”