Buckley hits winner as Cork hang on to keep double ambitions alive
AT full-time, relief hung in the air around Turner’s Cross. This was a close-run thing.
For the third year in a row, Cork City will descend on the Aviva Stadium on the first Sunday in November. For the first time, they will do so in search of a double – a feat that this club has never achieved.
John Caulfield’s charges will have to play better than this to achieve that ambition, though, with an improving Limerick operation showing that victory in their league meeting seven days earlier was no fluke. New boss Neil McDonald is finally getting a response from this group.
But semi-finals are all about the bottom line. It’s only the losers that really hang onto the memories.
“It was probably a gruelling match,” conceded Caulfield. But he felt that Cork were dominant at the business end, a view that Limerick could reasonably take issue with.
This affair did not have the appearance of a clash between protagonists separated by 36 points in the league table.
McDonald was aggrieved. “We definitely deserved something from the game,” sighed the Geordie.
Yet he admitted his charges paid the penalty for a tardy start where Cork kicked off with purpose, determined to get over the disappointment of the late concession against Dundalk on Monday night that delayed their league title party.
They were full value for their fifteenth-minute lead.
The key man for Cork in this phase was attacking midfielder Garry Buckley who kept picking up positions in the box that slipped the attention of Limerick pursuers.
He had already scooped a sitter over the bar before he broke the deadlock, with Buckley’s anticipation leaving him in the right place to meet Kieran Sadlier’s chip across the area and send it past Brendan Clarke. At that stage, the fear was that the evening would descend into anti-climax.
TIGHTENED
But Limerick had other ideas and once they tightened things up in the centre of the park and fixed the GPS setting on Buckley, they began to pose problems of their own.
The target was always the speedy Chiedozie Ogbene, the winter acquisition from Cork that had caused his old employers plenty of problems at Market’s Field last Friday.
Ogbene was a raw sub for Cork in last year’s final at the Aviva and has improved considerably in the intervening period. Caulfield tasked rookie Conor McCarthy with the job of shackling his old colleague but Ogbene’s pace was a constant threat.
McDonald is a big fan, and feels the 20-year-old needs more protection from referees. “When you have a talent that keeps taking people on and being scythed down, something must be done,” he said, “But he’s a brave lad and keeps getting back up and going for it again.”
With Frenchman Bastian Hery composed in midfield and Rodrigo Tosi’s hold-up play bringing others into the game, Cork suffered in the run-up to half-time and Caulfield was angry.
Ogbene came close to levelling things before the interval with Mark McNulty clambering to keep the ball out. The vocal travelling support sensed opportunity and the locals were subdued by comparison, anxious rather than excited by their position.
And nerves were frayed again from the restart with Tosi heading narrowly over following a cross from Hery who executed all of his work with a swagger throughout. By that juncture, Caulfield had already replaced Stephen Dooley with Jimmy Keohane.
INTENSITY
The intensity that was present throughout the Dundalk game was lacking. The effort had taken its toll and it really showed in the latter stages. But Cork did eventually overcome a sticky patch to efficiently stay ahead.
McCarthy was smarter in terms of keeping tabs on Ogbene with Limerick’s danger man unable to get in behind and McDonald mixed things up by switching him from left to right as part of a reshuffle.
Caulfield duly moved McCarthy to that side with Cork very mindful of a player that they inexplicably failed to keep hold of. McDonald emptied his bench in search of a lucrative replay with Hungarian Peter Berki and former City favourite John O’Flynn summoned. The applause for his arrival contrasted dramatically with the jeers for Ogbene.
But apprehension influenced the soundtrack of the dying minutes with the nervous concession of a corner provoking a goalmouth scramble with Hery’s header cleared off the line by a combination of McNulty and sub Steven Beattie. That was as close as the visitors came with the experience of Alan Bennett and Conor McCormack helping Cork to shut up shop.
“The bodies were tiring in the end,” said Caulfield, who was understandably reluctant to nominate a preferred opponent from Dundalk and Shamrock Rovers. “But we’re back at the Aviva which is the place to be.”
This game will be an afterthought if they go on to retain the trophy.