Richardson gained from Prague pain

IF Cork City succeed in putting Slavia Prague out of the UEFA Cup, they might in part have the Slavia Prague of yesteryear to thank for it.

The Czech side hammered Cork 6-0 on aggregate in the same competition in 1994. The City manager then, as now, was Damien Richardson, and he says the painful experience radically altered his approach to the game.

“They were a terrific side and they destroyed us,” he remembers. “I changed all my thoughts on football after that. I changed all my training methods and went back to working simply with the ball.”