I PLAYED 90 minutes and extra time of our 3-2 win over Athlone Town in the Leinster Senior Cup, on Monday, but felt my hamstring a bit on Wednesday. It looks as though I will miss out on St Pats’ game with Sligo this evening but it is important that I get myself right, and sharp.
I sat down with Liam Buckley, our manager, and had a really good chat with him. We’ve agreed to give me a run at the cup games and to give me three or four hard training days in between. I feel I need that to get back to my best, rather than the light training that often comes when you’re heavily involved in league games.
I don’t want to push myself too hard at this stage and risk missing five or six weeks of the season. The manager wants the best Mark Quigley he can get for his team and I do too. I’m not far off and will be targeting our games later in the month [UCD and Limerick] as a league comeback.
It has been great for Liam to have someone like Christy Fagan leading the line and scoring well. He is our only out-and-out striker at the moment so the challenge of scoring the bulk of the goals has been put up to him. He has responded really well and is eight and counting so far in the league.
We’ve had a couple of 4-0 wins in succession, in the league, and the lads are delighted with the upturn in performances and results. We gave up a couple of easy scoring chances to Athlone in our league game, last Friday. They had a great chance to open the scoring but missed. It finished 4-0 but the match was closer than it suggested. Still, the last couple of results have buoyed the lads. They are buzzing and can’t wait to get stuck into Sligo.
Sligo are another team to hit form in recent weeks, Having struggled to string results together at the start of the season, they have now won their last four matches. Even though they were well down the league standings, I always felt it was only a matter of time before they clicked. Even when they were drawing and losing, they were playing some good football. Kieran Djilali is having a fine season, in the Rovers midfield, so far. Sligo are nine points back of Dundalk, after they beat Cork last night, but I still believe they are title contenders.
We see ourselves as one of the main contenders too and a win tonight, at the Showgrounds, can see us go top for the first time this season. They beat us 2-0 there in the Setanta Cup semi finals but worse was to follow. They visited Richmond Park for the second leg and gave us a hiding.
We think there is still more to come from us but we will need to be firing on all cylinders to beat Sligo. Playing them up there is one of the toughest fixtures you will face all season.
Mark Quigley has scored over 70 goals in more than 280 League of Ireland matches. A winner of the 2012 Airtricity Player of the Year, he is now in his second spell with@stpatsfc
