Alan Bennett: ‘I’d like to play next season. It’s too good a group at the moment to step out of it’

If he’s showing a cool exterior, Alan Bennett reckons it might be because he’s coming straight from an ice bath.

“You have to stay in for 10 minutes,” he says. “If my teeth start chattering, that’s what’s happened.”

His teeth don’t chatter. Bennett looks as composed off the pitch as he has on it this season. The 35-year-old former Ireland international has been in exceptional form at the heart of a Cork City defence which has conceded just four goals all season en route to nine league games in a row.