Gary Hamilton will take his Glenavon team to the Oval, looking to build upon their 2-1 win over Glentoran on Tuesday night.
Two goals in three minutes from Robbie Garrett and Matthew Fitzpatrick earned the Lurgan Blues all three points at Mourneview Park on that occasion.
It was an remarkable achievement against the full-timers, considering how patched up the squad was.
And the bad news is that Glenavon will be without two further players for Saturday afternoon’s trip to East Belfast, due to Sean Ward and Peter Campbell picking up their fifth yellow cards of the season.
Matthew Snoddy comes back into contention after he served a one game ban, but other than that Gary Hamilton reports that it is ‘as you were’ from Tuesday.
That means that Andy Hall, Greg Moorhouse, Josh Doyle, Colin Coates, Lee McNulty and Calum Birney are all still missing.
Reflecting on Tuesday night’s win, Gary said, “I thought it was a solid enough all-round performance.
“I thought Doyler was exceptional, considering he probably shouldn’t have been playing. He’s done me a favour by chipping in and saying he would play. He was struggling with his back towards the end and he was stretching his back left, right and centre.
“That’s the type of characters we have at the football club and they deserve praise. They [Glentoran] are a top side and they’ll be challenging for the league at the end of the year, but it’s always good when you can match against them and come out on top.”
The Oval is a venue where Glenavon have enjoyed quite a bit of success in recent years. In fact, since November 2013 Glenavon have only suffered two defeats in their last 15 visits.
That’s quite a turnaround as since between February 1998 and February 2013 Glenavon had only won there once in 26 attempts.
Saturday’s game is behind closed doors, however Glentoran’s media team will be providing live coverage of the game on 247.tv/niprem for £7.
MATCH OFFICIALS
REFEREE: Keith Kennedy,
ASSISTANT REFEREE: George Argyropoulos, Stephen Bell
FOURTH OFFICIAL: Neil Robinson
LAST TIME OUT: Glenavon scored twice in the space of three second-half minutes to complete a dramatic 2-1 comeback victory over Glentoran at Mourneview Park on Tuesday night.
Ruaidhri Donnelly put the Glens in front midway through the first half when he converted from Conor McMenamin’s low cross, although it did appear that McMenamin had handled the ball in the build-up to the goal.
Glentoran were fairly comfortable at 1-0 until the 70th minute when Robert Garrett drew Glenavon level with a screamer of a shot from 25 yards out.
The comeback was complete three minutes later when substitute Matthew Fitzpatrick smashed home what proved to be the winner from inside the six-yard box.
