'Derry City still have a lot to play for’ - insists Ciaron Harkin

However, the former Institute and Coleraine said no one would be feeling sorry for themselves and pointed the Candy Stripes still have a lot to play for in a season that is far from over.

“It just wasn’t our night, we never turned up,” stated Harkin. “We were beaten by a penalty but it comes down to us not creating enough chances and obviously not taking our chances, the few that we did actually create. As I said, it just wasn’t our night. We didn’t play as well as we have been playing.

“There is loads still to play for and we know that. We have got ourselves into a position that we have something to play for and that’s obviously a credit to ourselves and our squad. Tonight isn’t going to be a damper on our season for too long.

“We have worked hard over the last few months. All the boys have put in a shift to get where we are now and hopefully we can rebuild again and go hard for the remaining games of the season.”

With this Friday’s clash at Bohemians postponed because the Dubliners have three players - Andy Lyons, Ross Tierney and Dawson Devoy - included in Jim Crawford’s Ireland U21 squad for the European qualifiers against Bosnia & Herzegovina and Luxembourg, Derry’s next league outing is another North West derby against Harps, this time at the Brandywell on Friday, September 10th and Harkin is confident they will be ready for that encounter.

“We’ll look at things over the next week, work hard and make sure that we get going again for the (Finn) Harps game,” he added.

“Ruaidhri (Higgins) said not to be too hard on ourselves and hopefully the lads aren’t because these days will come again and hopefully when they do we are on the right side of the result. We play Finn Harps again in a few weeks time in the league at home and we have to put things right.

“Nothing else matters in that game. We have to win as we need to win as many games as we can in the league during the run-in so we’ll be ready for it. Before tonight we had been on a good run so, as I said, we aren’t going to let this one defeat upset our season.

"It isn’t our season over. Yes we are out of the cup but we still have a lot to play for and all the lads know that so hopefully we can go on another winning run.”

The Creggan native conceded neither him nor his team-mates had done enough to give the large travelling support anything to really shout about at Finn Park.

“The fans tried to get us going but on the pitch we didn’t do enough. We didn’t create enough and we didn’t put enough pressure on Finn Harps to get the atmosphere up and get us going,” he confirmed.

“Look, it wasn’t our night and we’ll have to have a hard look at it now and make sure that we are ready for a our next game against Harps in a few weeks time.”