FAI Cup third round replay: Since Sunday's draw at the Showgrounds Don O'Riordan has been listening to people telling him Sligo's chance of upsetting league leaders Shelbourne to reach the quarter-finals of the Carlsberg-sponsored FAI Cup have all but disappeared.

As he prepared yesterday to take his young squad to Dublin for this evening's replay at Tolka Park he insisted that a clash in the last eight is still there to be fought for.

"Everyone's saying it's a foregone conclusion this time around," he says, "and, to be honest, I can understand their reasoning. I've been in positions like this before, though, and I know if our players go out there believing in themselves it only takes Shelbourne to play a little below their best for us to be capable of beating them."

O'Riordan could do with having a full squad available but with Steve Mullan a long-term injury and Gerry Carr, David O'Dowd and Jim Sheridan suspended his options are limited.

The Dubliner has a number of players back in contention for places, however, with Seán Purcell, Ian Rossiter, and Jim Gaffney expected to be in a position to figure this evening after the home game on Sunday. Gareth Gorman's knee injury has cleared up and may at least return to the bench.

"It's not exactly ideal that Pat Fenlon seems likely to be in a position to field his best team and I won't be but I'd take considerable encouragement from the weekend when I felt we matched them for long periods of what was really a great game.

"The trick now is to go down there and produce our best. We'll still have to hope they slip up, get complacent or something, but that happens all the time in the cup otherwise the bigger teams would always win. And if we get the lads out there is a positive frame of mind I still believe there could something in this for us."

Fenlon, meanwhile, , is waiting for word from under-21 international Wes Hoolahan who was due back yesterday from Poland where he scored one of Ireland's goals in Tuesday's 5-1 win. "He's supposed to have played very well out there and come through it fine but he's done a lot of travelling lately and the one last week to Slovenia and I want to make sure he's not too tired after it all."

If Fenlon decides the winger is fit then Hoolahan and Stephen Geoghegan will be in contention to start as the Shelbourne boss changes things about in the hope of "opening them up a little bit more this time. I thought Sunday's game should have been over early on but they came back at us and gave us a tough game. In the end I was happy enough with the draw, especially after hearing the result out of Galway."

Bohemians defender Colin Hawkins has been named as the Eircom/Soccer Writers Association of Ireland player of the month for July.