Home Farm forced to shuffle their deck

HOME FARM-EVERTON hope to disguise the loss of one of their more accomplished youngsters with the arrival of two mature campaigners for today's Harp Lager FAI Cup, second round replay against Cork City at Turner's Cross.

Stephen McGuinness, highly influential in the 1-1 draw at Whitehall, misses the game because he cannot get time off work. Against that, however, Roddy Collins and Martin Duffy, ineligible last Sunday, are now included in Martin Bayly's squad.

Collins, still capable of dredging up some of the skills which once marked him among the better finishers in the game here, will ensure more consistent support for John Kelly in the task of finding a way through the home defence. Originally, Bayly had hoped that Liam Kelly, the club's leading scorer who recently broke a bone in his hand, would be clear to play, but doctors have ruled against the suggestion of his lining out with an injured hand in plaster.

McGuinness's loss in central defence is potentially damaging to their hopes of reaching the quarter-final, for they struggled to defend against set-pieces and his strength in the air is invaluable.

Fran Hitchcock, who missed a penalty last Sunday, will again represent one of their bigger assets going forward, but he will not be required to put his nerve and reputation to the test if Richard O'Hanlon, the Waterford referee, awards them a penalty.

"I'll take it," says Bayly, with the assurance of a man who has missed just once from the penalty spot this season. "I would have taken the one last Sunday, too, had Fran not volunteered for the job before I got there."

With commendable realism, Rob Hindmarch, the Cork player-manager, makes no attempt to minimise the dimensions of their reprieve last Sunday when Hitchcock and goalkeeper Brian O'Shea got their calls mixed and Hindmarch's header finished in the net for an injury-time equaliser.

"I think everybody in the team was agreed that we'd done well to escape," he said. "We weren't too clever on the day and unless we put the lessons of that game to good use we could again struggle."

Kelvin Flanagan, who departed early in the first game, is still having treatment for a bruised shin, but the expectation is that teenager Tony Connolly will have recovered in time from the head injury which necessitated four stitches.