21 April 2017
By Bryan T. Smyth
bryan@TheCork.ie
Cork City return to league action tonight, as they travel to Dublin to face St Patrick’s Athletic.
City continued their excellent start to the season with a 3-0 win away to Limerick in the EA Sports Cup on Monday and come into the game on the back of nine consecutive league wins. Their last league outing saw John Caulfield’s side record a 2-0 win against Bohemians at Dalymount Park.
The home side come into the game having also progressed in the EA Sports Cup on Monday, against Bray Wanderers, and yesterday’s quarter final draw has seen the two sides drawn to meet at Turner’s Cross on Monday week. Pat’s are without a league win in their last two, a draw away to Galway United and a 2-0 home defeat against Limerick, prior to which they had recorded a 4-0 win away to Bohemians.
Speaking to the media before the game, Caulfield said: “Pat’s have some excellent players. They have the likes of O’Malley, Peers, Bermingham, Darren Dennehy, Cregg, Kelly, Desmond, O’Hanlon, Conan Byrne, Kurtis Byrne, Billy Dennehy, Fagan; so they have seasoned professionals who have won major trophies. The one thing about them is that they will always come out to play and they are always very attractive to watch. At the moment, some weeks they are lightening and other weeks they are not, which is probably frustrating for Liam. From our point of view, we have to assume Pat’s will play at their best and we have to be ready for that challenge.”
“There is no getting away from it, you have to be ready and have to focus on the next game. As we saw last Friday night, Bohemians threw everything at us and every game now is tough. You need to be tuned in and ready to go, because there are a lot of tight games. The previous week against Derry and the week before that against Limerick, we created a lot of chances and scored great goals, but last Friday was a different kind of game where we had to dig in and graft. It will be different type of game against Pat’s; there are probably areas of the game where they will think they can cause us trouble, and we are working on areas where we think we can cause them problems.”
Jimmy Keohane is ruled out after he suffered a shoulder injury against Bohemians last Friday. Steven Beattie and Johnny Dunleavy will both be assessed ahead of the game.
Injury News: Jimmy Keohane, Steven Beattie, Johnny Dunleavy
