A  pitch inspection is scheduled for 11am.

As work goes on to clear the Mourneview Park pitch and surroundings for tomorrow’s Tennent’s Irish Cup Quarter Final with Loughgall, Gary Hamilton is very hopeful that the game will go ahead. “At the minute we think it’ll be playable tomorrow. We’ll look at it again in the morning with a view to a pitch inspection if needed. After getting the snow cleared off most of the pitch we’re planning on volunteers coming in from 8am and I’ll be there from 8am as well to make sure we get it all cleared and give it the best chance that we can for the cup tie to go ahead.

“We want it to go ahead; you want to play cup ties on Saturdays for both clubs sake. Obviously you’ll get more of a crowd there on Saturday which will benefit both clubs financially in terms of the gate and also with the number of games that probably both clubs would have to play in the next coming weeks. The last thing you want to be doing is playing Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday. We’ll do everything we can to try and get the pitch playable and the match on tomorrow.

“We’ve made a good start today – we’ve cleared the car park and surroundings so that part is all up to scratch and now we’re clearing the pitch tonight and we’ll go again in the morning and make sure everything’s clear.

“As I said, we’re very hopeful of the game being on but if it’s not at least we’ve done everything in our power to get the match played.”

Andy Hall came off at Windsor Park with a tight hamstring on Tuesday night and won’t be risked tomorrow and Stephen Murray is part of the official party at a family wedding so he will miss out.

Andrew Doyle is back in the squad. Photo by Alan Weir

Mark Sykes and Joel Cooper return from suspension and Andrew Doyle is back from a head injury he picked up against Carrick Rangers.

“It’s a big tie,” Gary concluded as he headed back to Mourneview Park to help out with the clearance operation, “and we want to go into it with as strong a team as we can and we want to put in a similar performance to what we did the other night and go with the same effort, desire and hunger that we showed to beat Linfield and hopefully we can do that tomorrow and come the 90 minutes we’ll be in the semi-finals. Cup matches are all about getting into the hat for the next round and that’s where it’s at tomorrow.”

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