MORRISSEY OUT TO SET RECORD STRAIGHT
WHEN you’ve played in front of 75,000 at Old Trafford in the FA Cup, as Gearóid Morrissey has, there’s no such thing as big-match nerves. Morrissey made his Cambridge United debut in February 2015, against a Manchester United side that included the likes of De Gea, Mata, Rooney, Di Maria and Van Persie. Chops, as he is known, didn’t flinch then and has hardly taken a step back since either. Under Cork City manager John Caulfield, Morrissey has become a stoker supreme on the coal-face — a hard-tackling, box-tobox midfielder who sweats his all for the Leesiders. Come Sunday, the former Ringmahon Rangers player will be in the trenches, slugging it out with old rival Chris Shields, seeking to gain the high ground in a cup final likely to be decided by inches. And in contrast to some fearful Cork City fans, he has no issues with Dundalk standing between Cork City and a third successive Irish Daily Mail FAI Cup triumph. ‘They deserve to be there, we deserve to be there,’ he said. ‘You want to play against the best Dundalk team that they have because you feel afterwards (if you win), that you have earned it.’ City certainly earned it the hard way last year, with a late equaliser in injury-time preceding a penalty shoot-out. It was a second winners’ medal for Morrissey as the club clinched its first double. For Sunday’s reunion with familiar foes, Morrissey reckons City are in a better place now than they were at the end of August when their title defence ran aground. ‘Confidence is absolutely massive in sport. We lost a lot of it coming out of Europe for whatever reason. It’s tough to get it back,’ he observed. ‘Sometimes, Europe can rough you up a little. You come out of it licking your wounds. And I think you need to come out of it and almost forget about it immediately and get straight into your bread and butter, the league, the cup, all of that. I think probably we didn’t do that.’ ‘If you take your foot off the gas at all in a title race and you’re going to pay the price. We did and they won it, fair play to them but we can’t wait to put it right on Sunday.’ As Dundalk drove on, City’s season turned on a late penalty equaliser against Bohemians in the FAI Cup semi-final. Since then, they have not looked back, chalking up five wins and a draw. ‘The fact that we got a draw against the best Bohs team in years, took them to the Cross [Turner’s Cross] and finished the job off, we deserve huge credit for that. ‘The last three performances have been excellent, we’ve been scoring goals, defending properly, playing good football and, in between, we’ve been training right. ‘Everyone is giving 100 per cent in training to make sure we’re right leading into this game on Sunday. Our confidence is back.’ Morrissey is a link to the Cork City team of 2010 which emerged from the ashes of financial ruin to begin the slow climb towards the peak of Irish club football. His sporting ‘education’ continued with a gap year at Cambridge United from December 2014 to December 2015, before he returned a little older and a little wiser. Not yet 27, he is hungry for glory and ready ‘to tear into’ Sunday’s final.