With almost a full squad to choose from and his club's desperate battle against relegation set aside for a week or so, Finn Harps manager Gavin Dykes has been even more upbeat than usual while juggling his work, footballing and media commitments these past few days.

This evening's Harp Lager FAI Cup quarter-final against Galway United is, he insists, vital to a club still haunted by last season's last-minute surrender of the trophy, but "offer me the Bray scenario of winning it and going down", says Dykes, "and I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole".

That staying up is the priority for the Donegal club is scarcely surprising. It's not so long since the club was trapped in the wilderness of the First Division. Having done so well to establish themselves at the higher level after finally winning promotion it would be an enormous setback now to have to start from scratch again.

"It's vital that we stay up," says the Harps player-manager, "and if we can do that now after the problems that we've had for the majority of this season, which I'm absolutely sure that we can, then I think we can start moving forward with a fair degree of confidence again."

Dykes admits that his first few months in the job have been tough. Problems with the club's finances combined with the greatly increased workload, in part due to his decision to keep on playing, have left him with little or no free time, but he feels he has adapted well to the challenge and now simply needs to make it though to the summer in order to reorganise things slightly.

"Well, for a start I don't think I'll play after the summer if I'm still managing, which I fully expect to be. If I wasn't trying to run the team I'd be pretty confident that I'd have another year in me as a Premier Division player, but the demands of the management side are too great, even with somebody as good as Jonathon Speak there to help me. "And I think the financial side has improved considerably now so hopefully we can put the problems on that front behind us. I've already talked to the directors about the summer and they say that there'll be a reasonable amount of money there for me, so I'm happy enough with that."

His budgeting for the next campaign, of course, might be affected by what happens over the rest of this one. Relegation is likely to mean another round of spending reviews, a cup win and a place in Europe might persuade directors to loosen the purse strings a little more than planned.

He names several Galway United players as potentially causing Harps problems this evening, but admits to having been impressed in particular by Eric Lavine, who he considered making an offer for shortly after taking over from Charlie McGeever.

"In the end I hung on for Mike Turner, though, and I've no complaints about that because he's been fantastic since he got here."

Turner played a considerable part in the remarkable 7-1 defeat of Longford Town in the last round and such has been his impact generally that Dykes says he has been "accepted like a god around these parts".

And that defeat of Longford was the clearest evidence this season that Harps are too good to be consigned to First Division football for at least another year.