With a ‘massive’ Irish Cup game against Dungannon Swifts looming on Monday night, Gary Hamilton remains firmly focussed on tomorrow’s Danske Bank Premiership fixture with bottom club Ards but he’s not at all happy with the decision to force teams to play two games in three days. “In my opinion it’s absolutely disgraceful to ask any team to play two games in three days. Look at England, Scotland or Spain or Italy and tell me the last time a team was asked to play Saturday and Monday – it just doesn’t happen.

“We’ve a lot of players who simply can’t play in both games. We’ve players coming back from injuries or who’ve been playing with injuries or who haven’t been playing regular football and they just can’t all play in both games. We have to pick teams for the two games as best we can but we have to prioritise and, at this minute in time, the Irish Cup game is the most important so we have to make sure that we have our best 11 on the field that are all ready to go and fit to play on Monday night. In cup competitions you don’t get a second chance whereas in the league there are always other opportunities to claw points back. We hopefully will still have two competitive teams out for the games.”

Andrew Mitchell is fit again but Sammy Clingan picked up an Achilles injury in Tuesday night’s friendly with Finn Harps and will be out for 2 or 3 weeks.

Photo by Brian Bain

Form Guide

Last five league games

Glenavon: D L D L D

Ards: W L L L L

Head to Head

Last 10 games in all competitions

Glenavon: W8 D0 L2 F21 A8, Average goals per game 2.9

Matchday Sponsors

Match Officials

Referee Ian McNabb, Assistants Adam Jeffrey and Neill Gillespie, 4th Official Ken Gibbons

Ian McNabb is taking charge of his fourth game involving Glenavon this season.