Athlone face uphill struggle

HAVING produced quite a run of form just to keep their hopes of survival in the Premier Division alive, Tony Mannion's Athlone Town must tonight erase a 2-0 deficit in the home leg of their play off with Home Farm if they are to avoid undoing all their good work of the past three months.

Both managers go into the match with full panels to choose from but, while there is unlikely to be any great departure from the sides that started in Whitehall Friday, Mannion will be looking for a considerably better from his men.

"Maybe they were a bit hungrier than us on the night but its a bit difficult to get to grips with.

I think we felt a little bit too confident after pulling ourselves trouble on so many different occasions but there is still confidence within the team that we can turn it around again. After all going to Derry needing something wasn't an easy one but we managed it," he says.

Last year Athlone saved themselves in a penalty shoot out against Finn Harps and Mannion admits that even a repeat of that scenario looks pretty attractive now but, for the moment, the aim is "to concentrate on the 90 minutes and we'll be pleased if we have anything to worry about after that."

Even if they do get out of jail this evening, Athlone's escape acts may be about to become even trickier if the League goes ahead with the scheme put forward by several of the bigger clubs to reduce the size of the Premier Division to 10 teams over the next couple of seasons.

Dundalk, who had proposed changing the current format so that 12 teams would meet each other twice with an expanded League Cup, yesterday welcomed the decision to reverse approval for their plan. Chairman Enda McGuill remarked that "it never would have been on the table if we knew that offering the Inter Toto Cup place to the winners of the League Cup was out of the question.

"It was a better plan than some of the papers gave it credit for and it had a lot of support from smaller clubs who would have got the opportunity to play some attractive games but once we heard that, it couldn't really work."

Pat Dolan at St Patrick's Athletic, who proposed abandoning the new scheme welcomed a victory for common sensed while adding that "any reform of the League is a serious matter and we're simply trying to ensure that we take the time to do it properly".

This view was supported by Dr Tony O'Neill at UCD who, while not entirely happy with the current system, feels that its retention is a step towards a 10 team Premier Division with each side playing everybody else four times.

"It will facilitate a move towards such a situation which is not necessarily an ideal situation in my view but if the what it has to be then this is the only way to achieve it".

O'Neill also "expressed" doubt about the proposal that conditions concerning the quality of facilities be attached to promotions on the Premier Division. He remarked that "it's not really fair for some of the big clubs to say" we got our houses in order and so should you because in most cases they did it with the help of big grants from the FAI and unless." "that sort of money is available to everybody, then some clubs are clearly going to feel hard done by."

The time scale of any reduction in the Premier Division is likely to be discussed at the League a.g.m. on Saturday week although it may be some time after that before any firm decisions are made.

St Patrick's manager Brian Kerr, meanwhile, will have to wait until just before the new season for his testimonial match between his club and Middlesbrough as tonight's game has been postponed due to a number of injuries to key players in the English side.