CAULFIELD DISAPPOINTED WITH CITY’S STALEMATE AT SHAMROCK ROVERS

Daire Walsh

Soccer
AFTER seeing his side record a 0-0 draw with Shamrock Rovers at the Tallaght Stadium last night, Cork City manager John Caulfield admitted that he was disappointed to drop points against the south Dublin outfit.

This result, coupled with Dundalk’s 1-0 win over St Patrick’s Athletic, ensures that they are now three points behind the league leaders, and Caulfield acknowledged they didn’t create enough opportunities in the game.

“Yeah, we’re disappointed because we knew it was going to be a difficult tie. There’s always that danger when you have such a long lay-off. We prepared and we thought we’d done enough, but we were sluggish tonight, and didn’t create enough to win the match,” Caulfield remarked.

“I think overall a draw was fair enough. We are disappointed, obviously we came for the win. We made the changes, brought in three attacking players to see could we lift the game, but it wasn’t to be. We came to win the game, but we didn’t do enough.”

The former City striker felt that they overplayed the ball at times, and didn’t possess a cutting edge in attack. However, he was pleased with the team’s defensive effort and reserved special praise for 18-year-old Conor McCarthy on his debut.

“We just took the wrong option. Our delivery was poor in the first-half. We were in good areas, we didn’t use it well. I just felt we overplayed, took too many touches when we were on the counter-attack. Just overall, our forward play was poor.

“Defensively we were solid. I suppose the big plus was that we gave a young fella at 18 years of age his debut as well at right-back. Young Conor McCarthy, he did really, really well for us. Another young player coming through our ranks.”

This was City’s first game in all of three weeks following an extended mid-season break, and they will now face Linfield in the first leg of a Europa League qualifier at Windsor Park on Thursday. The length of this interval is something that Caulfield doesn’t agree with, and he recognised the need for his charges to get back up to the speed.

“I said from the start of the season, I didn’t agree with the three-week break. I think two is enough, most managers thought that and it’s difficult now going into Europe Thursday, because the move to summer football was to give us an advantage.

“It is worrying after a performance like that tonight. We’re hoping we can turnaround and get back to basics and get back to creating chances on Thursday night,” Caulfield added.