Ruaidhri Higgins reaches 150 games in charge of Derry City tomorrow night

Ruaidhri Higgins reaches a new milestone tomorrow night as he takes charge of Derry City for the 150th time.

With just 10 games left of the current league season, the Candystripes are right in the hunt for a first league title in 27 years, with Higgins leading the way at the end of what at times, has been a very challenging season.

The former midfielder has experienced a lot since replacing Declan Devine at the Brandywell in 2021, and he admitted it has been a demanding job in that time.

“I've loved it and hated it and every emotion that you can think of,” he said. “It's been interesting with a lot of ups and a lot of downs but I have a good memory; I remember what we achieved particularly in that first season. We were bottom of the league after half a dozen games and we ended up in Europe and that's probably been for me probably the biggest achievement over that time and for the squad I think it was an incredible achievement.

“Obviously since then we've invested and developed the squad, we've won the cup and finished second every year but we all know now what everyone wants and I'll be able to give you a better answer at the end of the season.”

If Derry City continue their impressive home form with a victory over Dundalk tomorrow night, they will go top for at least 24 hours with Shelbourne not in action until Saturday when they travel to face Sligo Rovers. That is as good an incentive as any for Higgins.

“Our home form has been good,” he acknowledged. “We're scoring goals at home and a win takes you top of the table for how long, God only knows, but it might only be for 24 hours, but that's the incentive. But there’s still 10 games to go and if we're putting top of the table with 3 or 4 to go then I would absolutely snap your hand off that, but we've got to be trying to pick up as many wins now as possible starting here at home on Friday.”

The club’s home form has been close to exceptional this season, with 11 wins from 15 games in all competitions so far. With every point and every game precious rom here on in, Higgins is hopeful that the consistency at home remains intact.

“That's it and some of the play here has been outstanding,” he stated. “We'll come here on Friday and try and put on a good performance and reward our supporters for sticking by us and keeping going. And you look at the numbers on a Monday, it wasn't a bank holiday here, it was a bank holiday down south and the numbers that we took on a Monday night was brilliant and they stuck right with us and they really drove the players on when we were getting tired so fair play to them.”

In trouble

Dundalk come to the Brandywell in trouble at the foot of the Premier Division, with last week’s defeat to Galway United meaning there is now just two points separating Jon Daly’s side and Drogheda United. That pressure has been known to lead struggling teams to surprise results in the latter stages each year.

“They have some really, really good players and in the second half down in Dalymount in particular they had 2 or 3 big chances to go and win the game, but they never took them,” Higgins said. “We need to be clinical on Friday, we need to be good in both boxes because I know between both boxes we can control the games and do all that really well. In recent times as I said we have been clinical in the majority of the games and I just hope that continues.”

Derry City fans are yet to see new signing Jacob Davenport in action, despite being named as a substitute in recent games. Higgins revealed that the former Man. City prospect suffered an injury in the first few days of arriving at his new cub.

“Jacob came in and after about a week’s training he had a slight back issue which held him back for 10-12 days really where he didn't get much done at all,” he explained. “He's got a good bit of training done now over the last week so you can see him getting stronger. We obviously had a behind closed doors friendly and he played 45 minutes and he was excellent in the game so he's getting closer to getting minutes for us.”