Sligo Rovers manager Liam Buckley said the red cards were decisive in the 3-1 victory over Finn Harps on Monday night as well as Ronan Murray’s introduction in The Showgrounds.

After 60 minutes where Rovers threatened to be better than Harps, it was the visitors who had more of an influence on affairs.

But repeated fouling from the visitors led to inevitable red cards, which helped the Bit O’ Red secure the win.

“There wasn’t a lot in the game for an hour, a draw was probably a fair result, a fairly scrappy game,” Buckley told RTE Sport.

“It’s probably as poor as we’ve played this season for the first hour. You need a break, the sending-offs had a big baring. That said, we have to play better. For the first hour it was in fits and starts. I would expect us to do better and hopefully we can do over the next few weeks.

“The last half hour we got back into it. It was fairly feisty, to put it mildly. But from where we at, it was just an important win for us. We picked up results over the last few weeks and we’ve a bit of momentum going. Hopefully we can continue with that. “

Murray showed his class with the second goal and causing all sorts of problems for Harps.

 “He’s on his way back [from injury]. He’s a top player. That’s why we have him in our group. He has come on and done the business for us.”

“We are not getting ahead of ourselves. It’s amazing what can happen over a few weeks. We’ll keep our feet on the ground. We have Pat’s next.

“It’s such a fickle business. If you don’t turn up you can get turned over. In fairness to the boys they are putting in some serious shifts every week. Hopefully that continues and we push on from there.”