LARNE first team coach Gary Haveron insists the Invermen won’t be taking H&W Welders lightly after knocking Linfield out of the Irish Cup on Saturday.
With Saturday's sixth round deadlocked at 1-1 between the two title contenders, Larne came out on top via a penalty shoot-out at Inver Park.
Lee Bonis struck a second half equaliser, cancelling out Kyle McClean’s opener for Linfield just before half-time, and the same player scored the winner from the spot kick.
It booked a quarter-final slot for Tiernan Lynch’s men away to the Welders, who have been resurgent in the Championship and Haveron is taking nothing for granted as the club look to claim the Cup for the first time in their history.
“You have got to respect everyone left in the competition – they are here on merit," he said.
“As a Premiership club you are probably always hoping to avoid Premiership opposition, and we’ve managed to do that.
“You always want a home draw as well, but we’ll go to the Welders and I’m sure we’ll take a big crowd for what will be a big game in the quarter-finals of the Irish Cup.
“They have a fantastic new stadium and a great set-up with new stadium and a 3g pitch which we’re well used to.
“We’ve spoken about last year when we put Linfield out and then went out ourselves in the next round against Ballymena, so we’re keen to avoid that happening this year and we’ll have to be on to make sure it doesn’t.”
While Larne had to come from behind to keep themselves in the competition on Saturday, Haveron feels the shoot-out produced the right outcome after Larne finished the match the stronger of the two sides.
It was the second time in less than three weeks that Larne defeated Linfield on penalties, after their County Antrim Shield victory came via the same route.
“I feel we were the team in the ascendancy, we created more of the clearcut chances in the game,” he said.
“We were disappointed to come 1-0 down at half-time, but the boys played into the wind in the second half and created lots of chances and limited them to very little really.
“I felt we were the better team throughout the 120 minutes and thankfully we got through the shoot-out.”
Larne came into Saturday’s game having failed to score in two of the three previous league games in what had been a frustrating period for the title chasers.
Haveron insists there was never any panic within the camp, however.
“The lack of goals recently has been one thing, but it’s not like we hadn’t been creating chances or putting the ball into the right areas,” he maintained.
“The Gaffer (Tiernan Lynch) talked a lot last week about trusting in the process because the process had been working.
“We have been dominating games in terms of possession, we have been putting the balls in dangerous areas and we have to keep believing in that and how hard we are working every day.
“That was testament to what happened on Saturday.”
