Hughes hoping injury situation has reduced ahead of Quins clash

AT the start of this week, Dungannon RFC head coach, Andrew Hughes didn’t know what sort of squad he would have available for Saturday’s home Senior Cup clash with Belfast Harlequins.

While it looked likely that James McMahon’s shin injury, sustained during the pre-Christmas Ulster Premiership clash with Ballymena, would keep him out, he was more hopeful that several others would recover.

Skipper Andrew McGregor has had the cast taken off his fractured thumb, Caolan Mulgrew is recovering well from a similar injury, while he hoped Matthew Montgomery’s ab muscle tear, Mark Faloon’s shoulder, David Leyburn’s knee and Jordan McIlwaine’s leg injuries would have cleared up to let them train and therefore be available for selection on Saturday.

“We’re probably waiting on about six players and of those six players you could potentially have five or you could have none,” Hughes admitted.

“That’s just where we are at but where we don’t want to be is that Saturday is our first day back, so if they can’t train this week they won’t be playing this Saturday.

“It will be a case of if we give them an extra week or not and keep them for next week.

“Everyone needs a game, but they were all two to four week injuries, so we will have to see if they were two or four.”

While this coming Saturday’s Senior Cup clash has come at a good time to get his squad warmed up for the resumption of All-Ireland League hostilities a week later, the opposition could not be worse as Dungannon face Harlequins again on January 15th.

And with the Belfast side doing well in the league, Hughes is unsure what approach they will take to the Senior Cup clash, or how he will approach it given, potentially, his lack of available players.

“It’s the sort of game that you want to put things into place for the following week but the downside is you’re playing the same team so you sort of have to play your bad hand,” he explained.

“It’s a catch-22, do you suck it up or throw the game as such?

“They are obviously flying at the minute but it’s whether they are focusing solely on the All-Ireland at this stage because I don’t think either team is in with much chance of winning the Senior Cup but you just don’t know.

“At this stage, we don’t really have players for either!”