ALAN FOLEY reports

Davy Byrne, the midfielder signed from Athlone Town at the end of last week, will miss out after failing to recover from the hamstring complaint that forced him off after barely half an hour into his debut against Alan Mathews’ team.

Jonathan Minnock, who returned last week, and Aaron Labonte are both back in training after long lay-offs, but Harps boss Paul Hegarty may not risk bringing the latter back too soon. Other long term absentees, Gary Beckett and Cornelius Gallagher, are still out, while Stuart Malcolm (Achilles) and Declan Boyle (hamstring) are unlikely starters.

Hegarty was particularly upset about the decision of Richie Winter to award Cork the spot kick from which Dave Mooney scored the decisive goal against the ‘Leesiders’ and having watched the incident involving Michael Funston and Liam Kearney against on television, he insisted the decision should have been “obstruction” but no more.

“The point I was trying to make was about Conor Gethins getting pulled back moments beforehand,” explained the Harps boss.

“To me, that would have been a soft penalty as well but if you’re going to give one then you should give the other. We’re not going to get those decisions. It’s disappointing and there’s no point in crying about it because you can get distracted by it.”

Sligo Rovers, who were without Killybegs full-back Seamus Coleman during last weekend’s 1-1 draw last weekend at Galway United’s Terryland Park, are the latest eircom League club to be hit by financial difficulties.

An emergency general meeting of the club on Monday night stated that e130,000 needed to be raised in order to secure the professional set up at The Showgrounds. The strongly worded statement claimed: “It is a matter of fact that if Sligo Rovers Football Club do not raise substantial funds by the end of August 2008 the club will no longer exist in football.”

Manager Paul Cook is now left with just 14 contracted players at the club following the departure of Anto Murphy to Bohemians and Jamie McKenzie to Apollon Limassol as the club enter a difficult stage in their existence.

On the field however, they have been getting results and won 1-0 at Finn Park earlier in the season when the impressive Portuguese defender Mauro Almeida scored the only goal.

“Sligo are playing really well”, Hegarty added. “I saw them a couple of weeks ago against Derry and to be quite honest, they should have won that game. They had enough chances to win quite comfortably and will be tough, especially on their own patch. They’re a difficult proposition but over the last few weeks we’ve been playing quite well.

“We’re not panicking and slowly but surely we are getting lads back. You cannot throw them straight in, as they need a bit of time to get up to the pace of things. We’re looking to get a bit of consistency and with David Tyrell and Neil McCafferty coming into the squad, we showed a good balance.