Farrell is disappointed with City’s defeat to Bohemians
WOMEN’S SOCCER
Daire Walsh
HAVING recognised signs of encouragement in his side’s display against Shelbourne in the FAI Cup on the previous weekend, Cork City manager Paul Farrell admitted it was disappointing to see side falling short to Bohemians in the Women’s National League last Saturday afternoon.
At the Oscar Traynor Centre in north Dublin, goals from Erica Burke and Lisa Murphy propelled Bohs towards a 2-0 victory over the Leesiders. City had pushed a high-flying Shels all the way seven days earlier, but struggled to make an impact in their WNL encounter with the Gypsies.
“It was just a bit of a lull performance, that’s what it looked like to us. In fairness to Bohs, they came out with a certain game plan and they disrupted us very early on. We didn’t adapt to it,” Farrell remarked.
“They made it difficult for us to play and it just wasn’t a very good performance then by us. We just needed to maybe find a different way of playing. Maybe up the tempo a little bit more in places, but we just didn’t do that.”
Moments after Burke had opened the scoring with a 50th-minute penalty, City were awarded a spot-kick of their own. Becky Cassin stepped up to the mark, but her resulting effort was turned away by Bohs netminder Courtney Maguire.
Although it could have been a radically different outcome had Cassin converted from 12 yards, Farrell praised the midfielder for having the courage to take on penalty duties.
“No one goes up to take a penalty and miss it. Becky is brave enough to step up and take it.
“She has already got one this season from the spot. There’s no problem with missing a penalty. She tried it, it didn’t come off and we’ll just hopefully get on with it.”
Having finished last year’s truncated league campaign in fourth, City currently find themselves in eighth-place with 13 defeats and just two wins from 19 games played.
While it remains a youthful squad that are going through a period of transition, Farrell acknowledged this can’t be used an explanation for every individual loss.
“They’ve played 20 games now at senior. Sometimes they make mistakes that it looks like maybe it’s the first or second game.
“I know that will come and hopefully they’ll learn from all them mistakes, but we can’t use youth as an issue anymore or a problem,” Farrell added.
“The girls are well able to play senior. Everyone that is in that dressing room with us is well able. They’re at senior standard. We can’t let youth dictate that.”