Cork City end their home season with a nil all draw against league champions Shamrock Rovers

Cork City 0 

Shamrock Rovers 0 

CORK CITY signed off their 2023 home league campaign with a draw against a much-changed champions Shamrock Rovers team on Monday. 

It was a tired performance from City and were it not for wasteful finishing from the Hoops the outcome of the game would have been very different.

Having had their faith sealed on Saturday night that they will be involved in the relegation play-off game, after Sligo Rovers picked up a point against Drogheda United, City made two changes to the side that lost to Derry City. John O’Donovan and Malik Dijsteel came into the side for Kevin Custovic and Jonas Hakkinen, both of whom were left out of the matchday squad.

City’s game-plan was quite risky with the defenders playing a high-line which was exposed on several occasions. 

Rovers’ striker Aaron Greene was finding joy running into the space left behind the City defence and it was his pass that set-up Simon Power for the first real chance of the match but his attempted lob went just wide.

Despite it being a weakened Rovers team, the Champions were dominating proceedings. 

They were comfortable in possession and always were willing runners off the ball to give their teammate in possession several options.

City struggled with the movement of the Hoops’ players and were it not for another poor finish from Power, the hosts would have been behind after the Rovers’ player fired over from inside the penalty area.

It was too easy for the visitors as they frequently played through City. 

As admirable as it was from the Rebel Army to try and press their opponents high up the pitch, Rovers continuously played through it, which meant that they were constantly bearing down on the City goal.

Unsurprisingly, Rovers looked much fresher than City, with the Hoops having made 10 changes from the team that played Friday night. 

City looked fatigued and struggled to lay a glove on their opponents because of it.

City did improve towards the latter stages of the half but the half-time whistle was welcomed by the players as it was an opportunity to allow them sometime to recover from the runaround they endured in the first 45 minutes.

Rovers should have been ahead immediately after the restart when Sean Hoare guided his header into the path of Power, who again was wasteful by failing to hit the target from inside the six-yard area.

Ruairi Keating should have done better when he got on the end of O’Donovan’s cross but the striker headed wide. 

That opportunity seemed to give City a new lease of life and Keating came close again seconds later but his effort went just over the crossbar.

It was hard not to admire the play of Rovers such was the fluency of their passing and movement. 

However they continued to pass up opportunities in front of goal which forced Rovers into making a double substitution of bringing on Rory Gaffney and Graham Burke to try to solve their problems. 

The substitutions actually had a negative effect on Rovers as the game fizzled out.

Cork City: Brooks; Bargary (Walker 89), Coleman, Honohan (Murphy 69), O’Donovan (Bailey 78), Dijksteel (Drinan 69), Bolger, Kravchuk, Coffey, Worman (Owolabi 78); Keating.

Shamrock Rovers: Pohls; Gannon (Kavanagh 86), Grace, Hoare, Power, Burt (Burke 64), Nugent, Cruise, Noonan, Razi; Greene (Gaffney 64).

Referee: R Hennessy.