Derry City can go top of the Premier Division for at least 24 hours if they defeat struggling Dundalk on Friday evening.
With League leaders Shelbourne not in action until Saturday night, the Candystripes can hit the summit courtesy of a superior goal difference if they continue an excellent home record which has brought nine wins in 13 outings at the Brandywell so far.
Following Monday’s 0-0 draw at Tolka Park, the title race is now in its home straight with just 10 games remaining and Ruaidhri Higgins says the incentive to go top at this stage will help his team.
“Our home form has been good,” he acknowledged.
“We’re scoring goals at home and a win takes you top of the table for how long God only knows, but it might only be for 24 hours, but that’s the incentive.
“But there’s still 10 games to go and if we’re sitting top of the table with three or four to go then I would absolutely snap your hand off for that, but we’ve got to be trying to pick up as many wins now as possible starting here at home on Friday.”
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With every point and every game precious from here on in, Higgins is hopeful that the consistency at home remains intact.
“Some of the play here has been outstanding,” he stated.
“We’ll try and put on a good performance and reward our supporters for sticking by us and keeping going.
“And you look at the numbers on a Monday — it wasn’t a bank holiday here, it was a bank holiday down south — and the numbers that we took on a Monday night was brilliant and they stuck right with us and they really drove the players on when we were getting tired so fair play to them.”
Dundalk come to the Brandywell in trouble at the foot of the Premier Division, with last week’s defeat to Galway United meaning there is now just two points separating Jon Daly’s side and Drogheda United.
“They have some really, really good players and in the second-half down in Dalymount in particular, they had two or three big chances to go and win the game, but they never took them,” Higgins said.
“We need to be clinical on Friday, we need to be good in both boxes because I know between both boxes we can control the games and do all that really well. In recent times, we have been clinical in the majority of the games and I just hope that continues.”