Dundalk head coach aiming high with league aspirations still on his mind

Stephen O’Donnell is relishing the prospect of leading Dundalk FC into Europe next season after his side extended their unbeaten home record to 14 matches on Friday.

The Lilywhites were 1-0 behind for the majority of their latest SSE Airtricity League fixture at home to Derry City, but snatched a late point, thanks to a 93rd-minute leveller.

That 1-1 draw keeps Dundalk second in the table, ten points clear in the race for European qualification, while the FAI Cup, in which Dundalk face Wexford away in the second round, also offers a route into the next edition of the Europa Conference League.

As a consequence of a bitterly disappointing sixth-place finish last term, The Lilywhites have this year been absent from European competitions for the first time since 2013.

Instead, they’ve watched on, as rival teams such as Shamrock Rovers, St Patrick’s Athletic and Sligo Rovers have flown the League of Ireland flag on the continental stage.

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However, O’Donnell aspires to soon replicate the exploits of Sligo and St Pats in particular, who have recorded respective away wins over Motherwell and CSKA Sofia.

Speaking after the 1-1 draw with Derry, he said: “Give me the nights St Pats had, Shamrock Rovers have had and the ones we’ve had previous. Them kind of nights are the nights you think about when you stop playing and you reminisce a bit.

“You look at the likes of Eoin Doyle. He had a good career in Britain, but I’m sure that’s one of the highlights of his career.

“Playing in Europe, playing in Bulgaria, Stoichkov at the match and you go and win the game 1-0. I don’t think he’d have anything to mirror that or to have on par with that for all the goals he scored in England.”

Europe may well be on the horizon, but Dundalk won’t have yet given up on winning the league outright, as they sit six points behind Shamrock Rovers with 11 games to play.

The first of those comes against Bohemians at Dalymount Park is this Friday night (kick-off, 7.45pm) where O’Donnell hopes to pick up just a third away win of the campaign.

“People think I’m codding,” he responded when probed on title-race discussions. “But what’s the point in me saying it is or it isn’t? We’ve two players injured for next Friday. Bohs are on a decent run.

“There’s no point in us talking about it. Ultimately, it’s going to be actions that are going to determine where we’re going to come at the end of the season, not what we say to the media or what we say verbally. It’s going to be what we do on the pitch, so we’ll see where that takes us.

“Obviously, we want our away record to be better, but I’m happy enough with the crew we have and the trajectory we’re going on. That’s for sure.”

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On their last visit to Dalymount back in February, Dundalk fell behind twice, but equalisers in either half from Patrick Hoban and Steven Bradley secured a 2-2 draw.

When the sides met again at Oriel Park in May, Dundalk were 1-0 down at half-time, but ran out 3-1 winners, thanks to goals from Hoban, Robbie Benson and Paul Doyle.

Dundalk will be minus Doyle and Daniel Kelly this Friday, and for a number of weeks, after O’Donnell confirmed that both players pulled their hamstring against Derry.

“Just hamstrings,” he explained. “They pulled up fairly abrupt, so that’s never a good sign. We’ll see how they are. I’d say they’re good enough hamstring injuries, so I’d say it’ll be a few weeks anyway.”

Replacing the injured Doyle in midfield after just 23 minutes against Derry was debutant Alfie Lewis, who was sampling his first piece of competitive football in over six months.

“He was thrown into a tough, high-intensity game there. He’s only trained this week and he’s had a couple of pre-season games with Plymouth, so that will bring him on a ton.

“I thought he showed flashes of what he can do, so he’ll be great for us. You have a player of Paul Doyle’s calibre going off and then to replace him with Alfie, that’s what we want. We want competition for places, competitiveness and to replace quality with quality.”

Friday night’s game between Bohs and Dundalk at Dalymount will be refereed by Adriano Reale (Kildare) and can be watched live and online via LOITV for a price of €7.