Longford Town come to the RSC this evening (KO 7.45 pm), hoping to take a third result from Waterford FC.
The last two times the sides have met it ended in a draw (0-0 & 1-1) with four valuable points gone missing in the Blue's efforts to reel in Galway at the summit.
"The Town" is still the only side to have beaten the Tribesmen all season, but thanks to their 10 losses in 21 outings, find themselves holding eighth place in the standings.
In their first meeting - which ended 1-all - the Blues failed to score, but a Daragh Lynch own goal secured a share of the spoils for Waterford. In their last 10 games, Longford has won four, lost five and drawn one. Their most recent result was a 2-1 win over Wexford at Bishopsgate last weekend.
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The Blues meanwhile come off the back of their resounding 6-1 thumping of Finn Harps last Friday. Conor Parsons bagged two that night, as did Ronan Coughlan, while Eddie Nolan and Roland Idowu also scored.
The big scoreline against Harps would have served to help the players put their disappointing performance against Cobh behind them, but they do still remain 13 points off Galway.
"Poor enough performance the week before [Cobh]," says first-team coach Brian Murphy ahead of kickoff. He added that "the lads were refocussed all week to go out and get a good result [Finn Harps]. Look, we took our chances well in the game and the spread of goals was good. It's about building. We've had a busy week obviously with Fleetwood on Tuesday and leading into Longford, we've got a couple of tired bodies naturally after the Fleetwood game, but it's all about picking up points. It's never over until it's over."
Murphy was very impressed by Parsons, who has now scored his 3rd and 4th goals of the season after 19 games. The former goalkeeper tells WLR Sport that he probably needed that bit of confidence having played "an awful lot of games since Keith and Alan came in. Whereas he probably didn't get the minutes beforehand. He's a hard worker in fairness to him."
New Arrivals
With the transfer window open since last weekend, Keith Long and his management team have been busy drafting in resources to feed into their promotion efforts.
Fleetwood has loaned defender Drew Baker to their sister club, midfielder Sam Perry has joined from Walsall, forward Christie Pattisson comes in with the option of playing as a striker or as a pacy winger while Serge Atakayi will offer some new attacking options.
"I think the hunger and the appetite should be there for the lads to prove a point again on Friday," says Murphy. "Because we have a few new bodies in and potentially maybe more to come. They [Long and Reynolds] are always looking to improve the squad, so anybody who plays in the game tomorrow night should be looking to take their chance."
