The Wanderers head into tonight’s league game with double champions Cork City without Mark O Connor (ankle), John Sullivan (groin), Dragos Mamaglia (International Duty) and Byron O Gorman (Unavailable) .
Promoted to the squad from our U17s is goalkeeper Enda Minogue, Enda will become our 7th player from the SJB Academy to be part of the 1st team squad this evening.
Caretaker manager Graham Kelly said “Enda has trained with the 1st team squad a lot this season so when Mark picked up a knock during the week it gave us the opportunity to get him involved in tonight’s squad, Again it shows that the pathway from the SJB Academy to the 1st team squad is in place and how well it is working, in tonight’s squad we will have 5 player’s all under the age of 18 while another 2 who have been in the squad in recent weeks are unavailable for selection.
With the transfer embargo in place and the 6 player’s leaving in July it only leaves us with 14 senior player’s so the chance for these young player’s to come in and experience 1st team football is fantastic, Credit has to go to the coaches in the academy who have helped these player’s develop and be ready to step up at such a young age, I have no doubt we will see these lads make their 1st team debuts over the coming week’s.
On tonight’s opponents Kelly said ” We know we are in for a really tough game, Cork are a fantastic side with quality all over the pitch, However our lads have trained really well this week and we head into the game with good home form and hopefully again tonight we can put in a performance that will enable us to take something from the game.