Daunting trip into the lion’s den for Drogs
AFTER losing to bottom club St Pat’s last week, Drogheda United are definitely stepping into the lion’s den when they travel to face runaway leaders Cork City this Friday (7.45pm).
Manager Pete Mahon, who admitted his team were lucky to escape with just a 2-0 defeat in Richmond Park, faces a massive task to lift his squad ahead of the trip to Turner’s Cross which has become more of a fortress than ever under the astute leadership of John Caulfield.
Indeed, Cork have won their last 16 home fixtures in all competitions dating back to last summer, scoring 54 goals and conceding only nine, and it would be arguably the biggest shock of the season to date if Drogheda could even pick up a point there.
After training on Sunday, Mahon hinted that Drogheda would have to play a defensive game and quipped: ‘It’s going to be a backs-to-the-wall performance and I might ask Jose Mourinho for a loan of his bus!’
The reality might be a little bit different, though, as teams’ attempts to ‘park the bus’ at Turner’s Cross invariably end in heavy defeats - and with Sean Thornton, Gavin Brennan, Stephen Elliott and Adam Wixted all likely to return to the starting line-up Drogheda do possess sufficient quality to create problems going forward.
One thing is for certain, though. The Boynesiders will have to produce a massively improved showing to stand a chance of putting a small dent in Cork’s title aspirations.
‘It was very disappointing overall against St Pat’s,’ Mahon admitted. ‘We started off poorly, and only for Stephen McGuinness making brilliant saves and Pat’s missing chances it could have been embarrassing at half-time.
‘They were not great in the second half and we raised it a little bit, but we got away with a 2-0 defeat and you would like to think we’ll get some kind of a reaction.
‘We had a discussion about it this morning and we will train tomorrow night [Monday] and hopefully get it out of our system.
‘It’s so tight, with eight teams battling to stay in the league, and every game is so important, and we had six points from the first two games in the first round and we have one from this round so far, so we’re five points in deficit already.’
Mahon pointed to the absence of first-choice players Sean Thornton, Gavin Brennan, Stephen Elliott, Adam Wixted and Colm Deasy as factors in last week’s defeat, but he insisted that wasn’t an excuse - nor was Anthony Buttimer’s decision not to award Drogheda a penalty in the second half.
‘I thought it was a stonewall penalty, but in fairness the man came up to me and said he might have got it wrong, and that proves he is a good person as well as a good referee.
‘It might have made a difference [2-1] with 25 minutes to go, but we’ll never know.’
Part of Drogheda’s preparations for Friday included a friendly against the Ireland Under-21s in Tallaght Stadium yesterday (Monday) where players with limited game time - Killian Brennan and brother Sean included - were due to feature prominently.
Mahon agreed that his players have the opportunity to make a name for themselves in Turner’s Cross, at the same time easing the pressure on Drogheda and of course breathing a bit of life into the title race, and he discounted the theory that his team would be travelling fearing the worst.
‘The attitude is always bang on, but we will have to start well and be on top of our game,’ he responded. ‘I’m hoping they won’t have a reaction to last Friday, but that [100%] record was always going to end. It just happened to be in Galway.
‘We are going to have a very difficult match down there, but we’ll plan the best we can, we’ll be fit and we’ll be better organised than we appeared to be last week.
‘We’ll need to concentrate on ourselves. We can’t think about what Cork will do. I don’t want to be disingenuous to St Pat’s, but we have to make sure we’re ready and give a far better performance than last week.
‘They are a full-time squad and they’re very, very strong, but it’s like anything. It’s 11 v 11, anybody can beat anybody and it would be nice if we were the first ones to do it. We’ll give it a good go.’