ROUND-UP Wexford face Force to be reckoned with
SOCCER Crunch Oscar Traynor tie in Ferrycarrig Park
WEXFORD Football League will be aiming to book their place in the knockout stages of the Oscar Traynor Trophy when they take on the Defence Forces in a crunch tie in Ferrycarrig Park on Saturday.
Having drawn 2-2 with the A.U.L. in their opening fixture and following it up with a 5-0 drubbing of the United Churches Football League, Wexford need a point from their final group game to progress.
However, John Godkin’s men will be looking to seal their place in the next round in style and still harbour hopes of topping the group, although the manager says their focus is solely on advancing in the competition.
‘Our objective is to qualify so we’re not looking any further than that at the moment,’ he said.
The Defence Forces, who have Wexford trio Ricky Fox, Lee Smith and Lee Aust in their squad, will be no pushovers though and they will also be eyeing a place in the next round.
They beat U.C.F.L. but lost out to A.U.L., so nothing short of a win would see them progress.
Wexford warmed up for Saturday’s game with a couple of recent practice games.
Goals from James Peare and Aaron Kehoe helped a county selection to overcome a North End United selection 2-1, with Adam Beary replying for the Sky Blues in what was a really good workout for the squad, with plenty of players getting valuable game time.
On Saturday Wexford travelled to Greystones to play Gary Dempsey’s Leinster Senior League side where they were beaten 3-2 in another very competitive encounter.
Wexford struggled to make an impact in the first-half and were 2-0 down at the break, but they battled back to level matters before conceding a late goal.
Aaron Kehoe got two good individual goals and Eoin Rhodes made his comeback to the squad having been out of action for a number of weeks.
The Defence Forces will train all week as part of their duties which will give them an advantage, and they also fly out to Oman next week for the world army championships.
Wexford hope to have a few players that missed the win over the United Churches Football League back in contention at the weekend, but John Peare is a big doubt.
The preparations continue with a training session on Wednesday evening, after which the match day squad will be named, and Godkin says the camp are rearing to go for Saturday’s crucial encounter.
‘We’ve a few injuries but it’s a home game.
‘If we were told at the start of the group that we’d have a home game to try to get a result to qualify we would have taken that.
‘It’s a nice position to be in but we still have to go and earn the result,’ he said.