Town bid to bounce back despite lengthy list of absentees

ATHLONE Town will be looking to recover swiftly from last weekend's FAI Cup hammering against Premier Division Cork City at Turner's Cross, when they resume their Airtricity League First Division campaign with a vital trip to fellow play-off hopefuls Wexford Youths (Friday, Ferrycarrig Park, 8pm). Despite taking an early lead against Cork, through Brian McCarthy, the Town then shipped six goals without reply, and exited the FAI Cup at the first hurdle. The players will no doubt be keen to wipe that scoreline from memory before Friday's long journey to Wexford, when two teams harbouring genuine ambitions of finishing third (and thus earning a crack at a promotion play-off) meet at Ferrycarrig Park. Athlone and Wexford have almost identical records this season, with 19 points accumulated from 12 matches to date. Both sides lie just one point adrift of Waterford Utd in third place, making Friday's meeting all the more important. Earlier in the campaign, Wexford emerged from Lissywollen with a 1-0 win, thanks to a Danny Furlong goal, and Athlone look to have an ever-expanding list of unavailable players for this Friday. With Paul Danaher expected to miss the rest of the season with a knee injury, Athlone are also without Mark Walshe this weekend, as he recovers from a broken finger sustained in the recent defeat to Limerick. Athlone's options in midfield have also deteriorated this week after Garvan Broughall and Stephen Relihan (along with third choice goalkeeper Scott Gaynor) departed for the United States to undertake a six-week coaches' course. That trio will be unavailable for at least six weeks, and possibly longer, while Darren Coleman (signed in pre-season from Killavilla Utd) is moving to Australia, for work reasons, following Friday's match. Coleman is expected to be in the squad for the Wexford game. Young midfielder Roy King has also shaken off a recent injury but is expected to be unavailable until after the Leaving Cert. There's also major doubts over Ross Kenny and Kevin Williamson's participation in Friday's game, with the pair suffering knee and hamstring problems respectively. To make matters worse, Brian McCarthy picked up a rib injury during last weekend's cup game, and had to be replaced in the second half. His involvement on Friday night is also in some doubt, according to assistant manager Padraig Moran. On the plus side, Mark Sherlock is due to return from injury, but captain Noel McGee is now also struggling with a hamstring complaint and could also miss the game. Padraig Moran this week described the Wexford game as "our biggest of the season", and feels a positive result will keep them right in the promotion race going into the short mid-season break. Following the game against Wexford, there will be a three-week mid-season break, before Athlone host Waterford on June 22, when the Town hope to be able to include a few new signings in their squad (the transfer window for signing junior league players opens on June 1). Moran said: "At the moment there's a real need to add to the squad. We're relying on a lot of young players, like it was in Cork, but Mike (Kerley, the manager) will do that over the coming weeks. "We were very disappointed to fold so easily last Friday. Cork are a very good side but we completely dominated the opening half hour, when everything we did was right and very encouraging. But once we conceded the heads went down, massive gaps started appearing, and it was suddenly like watching a completely different team. "To go from playing so well to conceding three goals in the space of five minutes was disastrous. We just stopped playing after Cork's first goal and that's not good enough. In fairness to Cork, they punished us for every single mistake we made, but we had a lengthy chat with the players afterwards and got a few things out in the open. We have to get that result out of the system straight away because the Wexford game is massive for us." Athlone have been looking at several trialists over the past few weeks, but no firm decision has yet been made on whether contracts will be offered to either Eric Molloy or Korean winger Li Sung. "I'm sure the manager will be making a few big decisions very soon, and talking to a few more potential signings, but for now we need to focus entirely on getting a result against Wexford," said Moran.