Veteran Harrington has no plans to prolong his City comeback
Cork City’s first-choice keeper injured a joint on his right shoulder 15 minutes into the game in Lithuania and with reserve keeper Mark McNulty currently sidelined with a groin injury, Damien Richardson had no option but to ask his goal-keeping coach to don the gloves one last time.
City make the trip to play Drogheda United in Louth tomorrow hoping to stretch their unbeaten league run to 11, and Harrington wants a new man in between the sticks as soon as possible to give the side the best possible chance of maintaining that record, as well as their six-point lead at the top of the Premier Division.
“Mick was very sore coming back and the priority now is to get a new goalkeeper in straight away,” said Harrington.
“We’re top of the league and playing in Europe and, while it was okay for me to play as a stopgap, I don’t want to be playing for the next while. We need a new guy to come in as soon as possible.”
Harrington made his senior debut for City all of 17 years ago and it was also in 1988 that he first played a European away game for the club when he appeared against Torpedo Moscow in the old Soviet Union.
Remarkably, this week’s 2-0 win in the Baltics was the first time he had featured in a Cork side that won a competitive game on foreign soil.
“I made one nice save in the second half which gave my confidence a real boost,” said Harrington, who holds the club records for most shut-outs (111 in 255 games), most shut-outs in a season (18 in 1990-91) as well as most consecutive shut-outs (six in 1990).
“My kicking was poor (against Ekranas). At my age, I just don’t have the power to get any real distance on them anymore. It was great to come back and play in a game like that and keep a clean sheet,” he said.
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