Kevin Doherty has his eyes on Harps after Drogs see off Cabinteely in Playoff

With additional reporting from Oisin Langan and Conan Byrne

Drogheda United assistant boss Kevin Doherty is fully aware that his side need to remain focused on the promotion prize having seen off Cabinteely on Friday evening at United Park.

 The former Shelbourne boss admits that the test the Co. Donegal pose to the Boynesiders surpasses that of Cabinteely – who were ultimately swept aside by his free-scoring side.

“When you’re playing, you’ll enjoy yourself and score as much. It comes from Tim and Conan will tell you, when we played Shels, in particular the Tolka games – we played a lot of good football,” Doherty told extratime.ie.

“Ultimately you want to play football that wins, and we were lucky enough to win it tonight – well not lucky because we deserved but it came off tonight.

“We’ve got good players; they’ve worked hard during the break – they really put the effort in, but we’re not even done half the job.

“We have a much, much tougher test coming up – it’s difficult that it’s Friday-Monday-Friday but we’re delighted to be here, we’ll take it.”

The former Longford Town assistant to Alan Matthews added; “The more confident you are going into games the better, it’s better to be on an upward curve than not.

“Even during the break, there was four weeks between us finishing our league campaign and the first-leg so it probably took us half an hour to get going – and I said it last week that it was great to get ninety minutes under our belt because it meant we had that coming into tonight.

“I think we’ve got that sharpness back now but it’s probably rolling into tiredness now with the heavy pitch, so the turnaround is going to be tough, but we’ll get them right and see where it takes us.”

With Finn Harps having a year of top-flight football under their belt, Doherty is wary of the dangers Ollie Horgan’s men pose to his side.  

“It’s going to be difficult; we certainly know that. They’ve strengthened a bit from the time we played last year. We’d know most of them, we’ve played them a few times.

“They’ve their players now that have Premier Division experience. It’s going to be tough no matter who we got.

“It’s not as if they finished bottom of the league by twenty points, they’ve had some good results this year.”

The 39-year-old finished; “They’re a good side, well managed, well coached and physical so we’ll do a lot of video work on them over the weekend and get them as ready as they can be for Monday.”