Drogheda aim to name Lawlor's successor soon

The Drogheda United board hope to name a long-term replacement for manager Martin Lawlor within two weeks, following his departure on Monday evening.

Lawlor had come under increasing pressure after resting some first-team players for the League Cup quarter-final against Athlone Town two months ago and, having seen his team pick up just four points in 10 league games since, he bowed to the board's desire for a change.

"In the short term we'd be hoping that Harry McCue can emulate the feat of Tony Parkes at Blackburn," said club secretary Gerry Kelly yesterday, "but we have a short list we would be interested in and we've had some inquiries already so we would hope to move fairly quickly."

The board appear to be contemplating a move for a full-time manager, possibly one from Britain. "We might look to take a different approach," said Kelly, "and someone with the connections to bring in an experienced player or two while working locally to root us more firmly in the community would be something that we would be interested in."

Under Lawlor, United had found it difficult to attract the sort of player required to strengthen an inexperienced panel, with several approaches failing to bear fruit.

In yesterday's report on the draw for the second round of the Harp Lager FAI Cup it was mistakenly asserted that, contrary to Pat Devlin's claim that Bray played "a couple of away games" on the way to winning the competition last season, the club had, in fact, played only one. This, of course, is incorrect. Wanderers played at Sligo Rovers and Shelbourne.