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DECLAN Devine says his Glentoran players will be preparing for Saturday’s mouth-watering Irish Cup clash at Strabane in the same manner as they did for the Boxing Day victory over arch rivals Linfield.
The Glens enjoyed a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year by recording victories against Coleraine, Linfield, Portadown and Carrick Rangers and Devine wants to carry on that momentum when the mighty Glens roll into town this weekend.
One thing’s for sure, Devine and his players won’t be taking Strabane’s challenge lightly.
“The way we are at the minute, the next game is the most important,” said the Derry man.
“The Irish Cup means a lot to Glentoran Football Club. I know a lot of the players at Strabane, I know Mo (Mahon); he was a coach at Derry when I was there and I know how they will go about their job.
“We’ll be 100 per cent in terms of our focus and how we prepare. We’ll prepare for this game exactly the same way we did for Linfield on Boxing Day.
“We’ll be going extremely strong. We have a week to prepare from our last game, we are in a decent run of form, we want to keep our momentum going and we certainly won’t be leaving players out for the sake of it
“That shows the respect we have for Strabane and the competition. It doesn’t matter who we play or where we play, we want to continue our decent run of form.
“It’s going to be a difficult venue, we know that; we won’t have as many supporters as we normally do but we will go with a professional attitude.
“We have a strong squad, we have competition for places and players will want to be holding on to their jersey. There are a lot of players here breathing down people’s necks trying to get an opportunity to get on the pitch.
“That’s something we will be looking at on Saturday, that players who are in possession of the jersey are trying to hold on to it because there are a lot of big games coming up over the next couple of weeks.”
With good reason, the east Belfast side are overwhelming favourites going into Saturday’s fifth round clash and few will be giving Strabane any hope of pulling off a major upset.
But Devine is long enough in football to know that shocks do happen and just 12 months ago he experienced that first hand.
“The Irish Cup, there are going to be surprises this week and we want to make sure we are not one of them,” he continued.
“We got clipped last year away to Bangor in the cup when they were in the Championship. We have learnt from that, we felt the pain of that, absolutely.
“I believe we have progressed as a team and I think we have got stronger as a squad. It’s going to take time to build the squad that we want but as I say we know there will be upsets come Friday or Saturday and we will make sure we approach the game in the same manner that saw us beat Coleraine, beat Linfield, beat Portadown and beat Carrick.
“I have worked with a lot of the Strabane players during my time at Derry, the ClubNI set-up and underage international football. I know how Mo prepares his team and I know they will be well up for the game. But I can guarantee we’ll be up for it as well and we’ll have to be bang at it
“We don’t want our run of form to stop. Players will be in all week and we’ll make sure they are going to Strabane with the right attitude. I have full trust in the players, they are very determined and focused this year, we certainly don’t want our run of form to end on Saturday.”
