Behan following Roy’s footsteps

“GOD is gone,” Denis Behan quipped when Roy O’Donovan finally left Cork City for Sunderland in August.

With John O’ Flynn seemingly ever liable to injury, the Rebel Army wondered where the goals would come from now, little knowing that the son of God was already in their midst.

Hitherto the striker in the gap for Cork, Behan has emerged in recent weeks as the team’s main source of goals, his hat-trick against Waterford United in the cup quarter-final replay on Tuesday night making it six in three games and confirming that the Abbeyfeale man is in the best form of his career.

“They’re just going in for me at the moment,” he said as he left Turner’s Cross with the match ball sticking out of his kit bag. “So much of it is in your head. If you get one chance you’ve got to take it before you’re tackled. I’m getting into positions to hit the ball early, like the last goal of the three and the goal down in Waterford in the first game.”

Manager Damien Richardson is happy to echo the sentiments of the hat-trick hero.

“In any walk of life, confidence is the final piece of the jigsaw and maybe the most important part,” he says.

“Denis has worked enormously hard on the training ground and in the gym and is now looking like a proper professional footballer. And it wasn’t just the hat-trick – some of his touches were absolutely brilliant.

‘‘And I can only see him getting better. And if you look at Denis and Leon (McSweeney) and John (O’Flynn) – there’s plenty of goals in the team now.”

Also plenty of creativity, with the erstwhile FIFA Two – Colin Healy and Gareth Farrelly – making the game look ridiculously easy at times, as only high quality players can do.

“We’ve gone to a different level with the two of them,” Richardson agrees. “It’s beautiful to watch sometimes. And I think it has changed Joe Gamble too, because his game has become simpler. There was a time when I had the devil’s own job to get Joe to release the ball early but now he does it all the time.’’

Blues boss Gareth Cronin had legitimate reasons for asserting that the final scoreline hardly did justice to his team’s efforts on the night.

“It was never a 4-0,” he said. “I thought in the first half we matched Cork and probably shaded it but we still went in two down to two of the worst goals any team has ever conceded, the second one in particular.

“But we’ve just got to push this to the back of our minds now. Friday’s game (against UCD) is massive for us now. Avoiding relegation is still completely in our hands – with seven games to go, we’re two points clear of Longford and three behind Bray.’’

For Cork City, by contrast, the business end of the season is all about the hunt for a runners-up spot in the league and a shot at cup glory.

“If we can get a win in Derry on Friday it will put us in a very good position for second spot,” says Richardson. “And we’re now in the semi-finals of the cup. But when you look at where we are now and back at the stop-start beginning we had to the season, you can’t help thinking: what if?

‘‘I think this team can be as good as the side which won the league two years ago – and, with the right additions, could be better. That team of 2005 was a good team but, if we bring the right players in, the potential here is enormous.”