Sligo Rovers vs Galway United – Match Preview

Sligo Rovers vs Galway United in the SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division. Saturday 6th April, 7:45PM at The Showgrounds, Sligo

Away Match Tickets are available HERE

John Caulfield spoke to our partners over at Galway Bay FM, listen to it in full below:

Getting to The Showgrounds, Sligo

We would recommend driving or getting a lift to Dundalk over taking public transport.

Driving: The drive to Sligo is relatively simple, at just under two hours, head north on the N83/N17.

Bus: You can get the a Feda Bus at 4PM, which will get you into Sligo at 6PM. You can also get Expressway which runs fairly frequently throughout the day.

Train: Due to the joys of public transport, although Sligo is just a two hour drive away, the train is not feasible. You would have to get a train from Galway to Dublin and then a Luas across Dublin City, then another train to Sligo and would take approximately 9hrs. So we definitely would recommend: Driving, getting a lift or the bus!

Getting back to Galway:

There are very limited public transport options back to Galway after the game. We would recommend driving or getting a lift.

Our resident statistician Julian Canny had a look through some of the stats ahead of the game, check them out below:

• It will be our 92nd meeting with Sligo (fifth most of all clubs) and we have just 19 wins from those with 29 draws and 43 defeats.
• 63 have been in the top flight (47 Premier Division and 16 in the one-Division League of Ireland) with a slightly better record of 16 wins, 19 draws and 28 defeats.
• Away from home our record is terrible though, in 48 matches, all played at the Showgrounds, we’ve only won 4 times, drawn 16 and lost 28.
• Just note that we have 3 penalty shoot-out wins in the League Cup against them, one home and two away, these are all considered as draws.
• Our last trip to the Showgrounds finished in a 1-1 draw in 2017, Jonah Ayunga, who’d later that season join United, opened the scoring for Sligo with Stephen Folan rescuing a point against them. We’ve actually drawn 4 of our last 5 trips up there (including a 2017 League Cup Shoot-out win)
• 
• Our last win up there was in the 2003 FAI Cup (that’s 20 matches without a win, 9 draws, 11 losses) and our last league win came in 1996 when Mark Herrick and Jumbo Brennan scored.

For players:

• Stephen Walsh would be making his 305th appearance putting him joint-fifth with Billy Clery on the all-time appearances list. His 48 goals have him sixth on the all-time scorers list.
• Conor McCormack will become just the 62nd player to have made 100 appearances for the club should he play, in all those games he still only has the very dubious goal awarded to him straight from a corner in Wexford!
• Ed McCarthy would be making his 80th appearance for the club
• Wassim Aouachria would be making his 20th should he feature after an injury plagued start to the season.
• 

A number of our players have played with Sligo before:

• Brendan Clarke spent 2011 at Sligo Rovers playing 41 times and winning the FAI Cup
• Regan Donelon joined them in 2014 as a youngster and bar a loan spell at Harps he was with them until 2021 when joining Harps again the following season. In total he played 150 games for them.
• Colm Horgan played for them in the 2021 and 2022 seasons playing 53 times

This season has seen us sign two players from them:

• Karl O’Sullivan joined them for the 2022 and 2023 seasons from Finn Harps making 49 appearances with 3 goals
• While Garry Buckley who has been out injured since the opening day for us played with them from 2020 until joining us this season making 80 appearances.

For their part the only player in their squad who used to play with us:

• Wilson Waweru, he scored 18 times in 92 games for us.

Finally 6th April has seen us play 6 times previously with 2 wins, 1 draw and 3 defeats.

The game will be streamed LIVE on LOITV HERE

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