Coalisland bid to complete Junior Cup hat-trick against F&W teams

COALISLAND Athletic are hoping to complete a Fermanagh and Western hat-trick on Wednesday night at Stangmore Park and in the process book their place in the Irish Junior Cup final for the first time ever.

Having already ousted NFC Kesh and Tummery Athletic in the previous two rounds, a third Fermanagh and Western Division One side, Strathroy Harps, now stand in the way of David Magee’s side making club history.

Previously, Coalisland have a competition best of reaching the last-eight and, having already surpassed that achievement, Magee hopes his chargres can go another step further by booking their place in the showpiece decicer.

However, while many have pegged Athletic as pre-match favourites, the Athletic supremo disagrees.

“I’d say, they have won the cup before so I’d reckon they are favourites,” he said.

“We’ve beaten two teams from that division, we beat Kesh in the previous round before we beat Tummery, but at that stage we had the full squad out.

“At this stage we have one or two to come in and Conor McAlislkey hasn’t even been starting.

“To get to the final would be unbelievable, it would be our wildest dreams and hopefully we can do that because the club has been going this long time and the closest we got was the quarter-finals so this is a bigger step up again, but Strathroy have won it before so I’d say they will be favourites whether we beat teams in their league or not.

“We’ve no illusions that because we beat Kesh and Tummery that we’re just going to rock up and beat them boys, but it would be nice to complete a Fermanagh and Western hat-trick!”

Ahead of Wednesday’s semi-final clash, Coalisland’s squad is in good nick with experienced players like in-form striker PJ Lavery and former Tyrone ace McAliskey all fit and firing and while influential centre half, Dan McNulty is out after picking up an injury against Tummery in the last-eight, Magee is happy with his lot.

“The boys with the experience are important, you rely on them heavily but we have four 20-year-olds in the starting line-up – my own son Ciaran Magee, Conor Hughes, Aaron Kerr and Shay Coney – and I’ve managed them through Dungannon Youth from they were eight years of age until they were 16.

“We have a good mix of youth and experience now with the 20 year-olds, 25 to 27 year olds and we have ones at 31 or 32, there’s a good blend but Danny McNulty is a definitely out of Wednesday which is a massive loss.

“He plays in the middle of the back three but Paul Coney has been on our books all season and we have brought him in since big Dan got hurt and he’s done a good job in there too. We have strength and depth.”

Regardless of how Wednesday goes, Coalisland still have plenty to play for this season with the division one title – despite last Saturday’s 5-0 reverse at Hill Street – still there’s to lose, and they are also battling for glory in two other cup competitions – the Alexandra Cup and the Marshall Cup.

But the Irish Junior is still the big prize they want to capture most of all and they hope to do so in front of a huge crowd of Coalisland faithful at Stangmore Park this coming Wednesday evening.