By Gerard Mulreaney (@gerardmulreaney)
Cork City manager John Caulfield admitted that his side didn’t do enough to take anything out if the game at Oriel Park on Friday night.
It was an unfortunate error by Cork goalkeeper Mark McNulty that led to the only goal of the game. A free-kick by Ronan Murray was spilled by McNulty and Patrick Hoban was quickest to react to poke the ball home.
Dundalk were much the better side, and could quite conceivable have won by a much bigger margin, with both Murray and Hoban going close to extending their lead.
Cork surprised many by leaving Barry McNamee on the bench, but that plan went out the window early in the first half when club captain Conor McCormack had to be taken off, before he got sent off, and McNamee came on in his place.
Caulfield spoke about the decision to leave McNamee out of the starting eleven, “It was a major decision, because the problem was that Barry had flu during the week. We were trying to give him time.”
Unfortunately for Cork, an early yellow card for McCormack, followed by a couple of other rash challenges forced Caulfield‘s hand. The manager said, “Conor’s our captain and he's an absolutely phenomenal player, but the problem was we got word off the fourth official, he was after been booked and if he got another decision against him he'd have been gone. The last thing we wanted to be was be down to 10 men with half an hour gone, so yes it was a difficult decision to make.”
Caulfield continued, “You know, at the time we didn't wanted to lose him as he is such a dangerous player but with so much hostility around the ground any tackle and players are running at the referees. So we made a change and that's where we were at. However over the whole 90 minutes we didn't do enough. If we got back to 1-1 it would probably have been a different game but we hadn't enough to win the game.”
Caulfield knew what to expect heading into a fiery Oriel Park and said, “We spoke all week about how we thought it would be a very physical and hostile game, and to be fair it was everything that we spoke about. For the first 30 minutes we hadn't done enough. We conceded a goal early on, and we were on the back foot straight away. We had two guys booked, Conor McCormack very early on, then Gary Buckley.”
“The way the intimidation was coming from the sideline, coming from the bench, coming from players, you’re looking at a situation where we could've been down to 10 men, so we try to make a change. We had a great chance to get one back before half-time, but overall tonight too many of us didn't play well enough and that's the bottom line,” said Caulfield.
Now City have a massive game in Turner’s Cross on Monday night as Shamrock Rovers come to town. Rovers are on such a high following 12 goals in two games, but Caulfield is looking forward to it, “We’re at home in front of all our supporters, and we’re looking forward to the game. It’s a massive match playing Shamrock Rovers. They’re another team who could possibly win the league, but it'll be an interesting game. We know tonight we didn't do enough and know we need to be better.”
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