Cork City's Fenn to miss UEFA clash

Neale Fenn is out of Cork City’s UEFA Cup clash with FK Ekranas of Panevezys in Lithuania on Thursday night.

The in-form centre-forward has stayed behind in Cork as his partner, Lisa-Jane Nutkins is expecting the couple’s first child in the next 24-48 hours.

This will force Damien Richardson into making at least one change from the team that beat Bohs 2-1 on Friday.

Denis Behan is expected to start with John O’Flynn up front, although Richardson may switch Roy O’Donovan to centre-forward and start Billy Woods if he decided to play 4-5-1.

Meanwhile, chairman Brian Lennox’s dream for Cork City in Europe this year is for the club to get into the knockout stages of the UEFA Cup.

A tall order, perhaps, but he was in upbeat mood at Cork Airport early this morning as Richardson’s league leaders jetted off to Vilnius for a clash with FK Ekranas of Panevezys in Lithuania on Thursday.

“I’d love for the team to get to the knockout stages and when you look at the run of success we had in the Intertoto Cup last year against teams like Malmo, Nijmegen and Nantes it’s hard not to dream about progressing in this competition too,” said Lennox.

“I know there are fierce expectations of us this year and you can sense it around the city and on match nights at Turner’s Cross. They all want us to win the league this year with Cork being the Capital of Culture and I hope we do, but there are expectations of us in the UEFA Cup too even though it is a better quality competition than the Intertoto Cup.

“I certainly don’t want to presume too much,” said Lennox whose financial outlay for this trip alone runs at €100,000.

“The priority for me is that we fill Turner’s Cross for the return leg at the end of the month and to do that we need a good result in Lithuania.

"We need to keep the tie alive for Cork as we are already operating in a loss-making situation because the ground capacity has been reduced to 5,000.

“It’s got to be an all-seater match under UEFA guidelines and that means the Shed-end will be closed on July 28. It reduces our potential crowd by over 1,200 people and believe me that’s a costly exercise.

“We don’t want to exploit the fans either, but we have to be realistic and that’s why we had to set the admission prices at €20 and €10 as we did. We are effectively working at a loss with the imposition of a crowd limit but we have to try and balance the books too.

“I know it’s a drain on the fans’ pockets but I want us all to pull together on this,” he added.

Cork’s estimated loss on the return leg is running at close to €18,000.