Cork v Kildare: John Cleary on injuries, recovering from Derry loss and Portugal trip

Cork manager John Cleary has confirmed a number of key players are set to return for his side’s crucial Allianz Division 2 Football League fixture this weekend.

The Rebels entertain Kildare on Saturday at Páirc Uí Rinn with throw-in at 5pm as Cork look to keep their promotion push on track going into the last game of the season.

The Leesiders come into this one on the back of a 20-point drubbing against Derry at Find Insurance Celtic Park last Sunday week albeit their hand was weakened due to players unavailable.

Cork are third on eight points only outside the top two on scoring difference.

Ian Maguire is back after suspension, Tommy Walsh and Brian O’Driscoll are also in contention for the weekend while there are a few not far away.

“Pa Doyle, he’s probably 50-50, he’s back doing a small bit of training, hasn’t trained fully yet, Tommy Walsh missed the last day, so again he’s back in training so I think he’ll be okay for the weekend. Brian O’Driscoll is back training, Ian Maguire is back of course, Brian Hurley is 50-50 and Mark Cronin is the same really," Cleary said on Tuesday evening.

“We’ll see how they go in these two nights. The others aren’t out of the frame yet, they’re 50-50, we’ll just see how they go, they haven’t trained fully yet, so we’ll just see how this week goes. We have two more nights now, so that’ll decide it.

“We did have five games in six weeks, a bit of travelling in that and you know the Meath game was a very physical game and you know we thought we’d come out all right out of it but we did get knocks and injuries from that.

“So yeah, I suppose, look, lots of teams have injuries, but our injuries came at the one time but as I said, none of them are long-term so hopefully we’ll have a good few back now for the weekend if this week goes okay.” 

Cork have used the two-week break wisely. They were in Portugal for four days on a warm-weather training camp landing back late last Saturday night. It probably was a good time as any given the loss to Derry.

“The camp was planned ages and ages ago, so whatever the result was going to be against Derry…I remember last year we certainly had a poor defeat against Roscommon and I suppose it definitely focuses the mind but it doesn’t change the plan of what we were going to do,” Cleary says.

“Basically the camp is a review of what we have done in the season so far and it’s getting ready for the rest of the season, so just because maybe we had a poor result, maybe a poor match, it didn’t overshadow everything as well, it wasn’t just that match that we were focusing on, it was the whole season so far and that just happened to be the last match.

“We reviewed the Derry match on Tuesday when we got out there, the same as normal as we do always, the pluses and minuses and then we parted because we weren’t playing Derry again this weekend, so basically a lot of our preparation was towards Kildare and Tyrone, Derry was parked then, lessons learned and move on.

“I remember Damien Delaney was with us last year doing a session. If you had a poor defeat he said, look, just park it and I think we took a bit of advice from him on that, park it, deal with it, move on because, as I said, the following week you’re not playing Derry again.” 

The Kildare game on Saturday is the second league encounter this season taking place at Páirc Uí Rinn.

The Cork boss has confirmed that the long-term plan is still to play games in the big house, SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

“I suppose we did get a big kick from playing here the last day against Meath, there was a great atmosphere. It probably suits a smaller crowd and we felt after it, look, why not go for it here again against Kildare? As I said, prior to that Meath game, it was only going to be a score or two in the game and it might be the same this weekend.”