Cork City should go all out for first Premier Division win when they host Bohs
Cork City manager Tim Clancy, left, and Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley after the postponement last Sunday. Picture: Seb Daly/Sportsfile
With so many complaints from managers about player fatigue in modern football, having a match postponed should be seen as a good thing.
However when you are only one game into a new campaign, having a free week in only the second weekend of the season is a negative for a team, which is why City might be at a little disadvantage to their counterparts this evening.
After a long off-season, players and managers are desperate for games when their competitive campaign begins, the last thing Tim Clancy and his players would have wanted was their game against Shamrock Rovers to be called off especially the way it did.
They had to travel to Dublin, have their pre-match meal, get prepared mentally for a game only to be told with less than 40 minutes to kick-off, the game was off.
They then had to travel back down to Cork. It was a waste of a day, and despite not playing a match, the entire day would have still drained the players.
The most important thing at the beginning of the season is for players to get match fitness and match sharpness and you only get that by playing games.
Usually, each club is in the same position in terms of the number of games they have played but City go into their clash with Bohemians with that disadvantage because Bohs should have a little bit more fitness and sharpness than City, with the Gypises having played a game more, even if that extra game was a defeat against Derry City.
There is a bit of pressure on Bohs this season after a very underwhelming campaign last year.
The Gypises have had two difficult fixtures, Shamrock Rovers and Derry, to start their campaign so three points from six isn’t bad.
What you can say about Bohs is they have match-winners in their side with the likes of Lys Mousset, Connor Parsons and Dawson Devoy.
The problem they will have is will their players have the right attitude in games.
It’s easy to get motivated when you are playing in front of over 33,000 spectators at the Aviva Stadium against your fierce rivals but then it’s about being able to put in the same performance and effort in lesser fixtures which they couldn’t do against Derry last week.
City shouldn’t give them too much respect.
City have to start the same way they did against Galway United a fortnight ago, where they just went forward as quickly as they could every time they were in possession and didn’t allow Galway any time to settle into the game.
Perhaps playing into the Shed End in the first half helped them with such a bright start and it might be something they consider doing again, but I felt not playing into it in the second period hindered City.
And they never looked like getting the winning goal once the game went to 2-2, whereas had City been playing into the Shed End they would have had that extra bit of energy in the Galway game when it was level.
Tonight is a match City should be looking at to get their first victory of the season.
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