Kevin McHugh says Finn Harps young guns need to plug experience deficit

Kevin McHugh says Finn Harps’ youngsters will again be given a chance to show their wares in the first team.

The winter months have seen plenty of personnel change at Finn Park ahead of Friday’s First Division opener at Kerry FC.

A very much new-look Harps, featuring a couple of trial players, lost 4-0 to Premier Division outfit Sligo Rovers on Saturday night at The Showgrounds in a pre-season friendly.

Aaron McLaughlin, the 18-year-old attacker who last played in September, is ‘another couple of weeks’ from a return to action. McLaughlin is nursing a quad injury and remains sidelined.

Closed-season recruit Dara McGuinness was absent from Saturday’s squad in Sligo and veteran midfielder David Cawley was missing due to ‘illness’, but McHugh says he hopes that both will be ready for Kerry. 

“We are where we are and we know where we’re at,” Harps Assistant Manager McHugh told Donegal Live. 

“You can see the gap there. Are we ready to go up into that 10-team League? No, we’re not and there is no point saying that we are. We’re trying to put a squad together to get three points every week and be as competitive as we can. 

“There is quality through the squad. We want to improve on last year. People say budgets don’t win Leagues, but usually the teams with the biggest budgets can have the biggest squads, they have a full suite of stuff like overnight stays and all those wee things help.”

Top scorer Success Edogun is among the departures from last season while Tim Hiemer, Jamie Watson, Matty Makinson, Noe Baba and Ryan Rainey have also left. Stephen Doherty signed for Institute before the end of the 2024 season and loanees Luke O’Brien and Sean Patton have returned to their respective parent clubs.

McHugh said: “Some of the younger boys are really making a case for themselves. We have to leave that open because we don’t want to block pathways for players coming through.

“We’ve lost nine players and had to replace them. We’d love to have had a settled squad two or three weeks ago to put a proper shape on it. We’re probably two or three weeks behind where we’d like to be.

“We’ve lost a few really experienced players. It is a young squad, but with a young squad comes enthusiasm and energy and we’ll work with that all day long.”

Connor Malley, Gareth McElroy, Francely Lamboto and Cian Kavanagh hit the goals for Sligo on Saturday.

McHugh said: “It was a really good game for us to get a proper game feel and get the legs going.

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“You can see the gap from the Premier Division sides. With all due respect to the teams we’ve played in pre-season, that’s the first proper test that we’ve got. You can see Sligo are a good side. We gave away a couple of soft goals, but it was really important for us to get a game like that to get a proper look at people.”