However they got here, Cork City’s nightmare is real

Cork City’s descent has been as rapid as it has inexplicable but until the club has achieved safe distance from this looming iceberg, such inquisitions are best parked.

AVOIDING TROUBLE: Cork City midfielder Henry Ochieng shields possession from Patrick McEleney of Dundalk during Tuesday's Premier Division clash at Turner's Cross. 

If most things around ghostly Turner’s Cross on Tuesday night felt surreal, the plight of its tenants, Cork City, is desperate for its authenticity. The numbers don’t lie. Ten defeats from 15 games, the latest against champions Dundalk delivering some persuasive characteristics a new manager like Colin Healy would demand – but also the troubling traits one expects of a side rooted to the bottom of the Premier Division.

Cork City has three games left to extricate themselves from a relegation straitjacket and unless Healy can effect a startling metamorphosis in the next few weeks, the great escape will come via a play off against a promotion candidate from the first division – if at all.

How it has come to this for a club that found its level challenging at the sharp end of the table is the stuff of finger-pointing intrigue and financial hard questions. City’s descent has been as rapid as it has inexplicable but until the club’s hierarchy, its members, management and players has achieved safe distance from this looming iceberg, such inquisitions are best parked.

“You keep getting knocked, but you’ve got to keep going, don’t you?”, Colin Healy shrugged after Tuesday’s defeat. “You get knockbacks, (but) are you going to say ‘that’s enough for me’? Where are you going to get in life with that? You keep getting back up and working hard. Results with change, trust me.” They’ll need to change, and fast. Cork entertain Waterford on Saturday in a Munster derby that has few equals in terms of implications for Cork. “It’s a very, very important game,” Healy agreed. They trail second-from-bottom Finn Harps by two points and have played a game more. City visit Sligo and entertain Derry in their final two games. Two very different scenarios could flow from the end game.

If City somehow avoid relegation, they are unquestionably a more enticing takeover proposition for UK businessman Trevor Hemmings, the owner of Preston North End. The Board of Foras, the Supporters Trust that currently owns the club, will vote on the Hemmings proposition later this month, cognisant he has already paid a reputed €500,000 in lieu of the sell-on clauses for former City players and now Irish internationals Seanie Maguire and Alan Browne.

If Cork are relegated - and in a one-off play-off at a neutral venue, it’s not difficult to envisage - the club would face different challenges and have time and cause to recalibrate - which may be no bad thing.

Mr Hemming’s largesse has bought Cork financial breathing space, whatever the price for that may eventually be. Because of the shortened season and COVID-19 payments, expenditure has not been as draining as per regular season. A lower-cost base, some valued experience added to the Foras board and a sense of renewal could create time and space for a well-intentioned, well-structured local consortium to come calling. Not that there’s been many sugar daddies in the history of Cork football, least not ones that could be taken seriously. Any cursory inspection of the financial wellbeing of the game in the second city would conclude that creating and maintaining a successful business model has been, and remains, a tough needle to thread.

Football on Leeside has lurched to instability more than once but such a demoralising vista seemed a long way off when they were crowned Premier League champions and FAI Cup winners under John Caulfield three years ago. The shock here isn’t that Cork City is in trouble; it’s how precipitous the fall has been.

None of that is Healy’s priority for the time being. Even in the couple of days since the loss to Bohs in Dublin, his coaching team (which featured the returning John Cotter on Tuesday night) has applied a sense of rigour and structure. However, Cork City has scored a mere eight goals in this truncated campaign and at no stage in the 0-2 loss to Dundalk was there punch or potency about their efforts. Credit to lone striker Deshane Dalling as he tried in vain to buy time for his colleagues to get past halfway, but such forays were rare.

It was a performance, Healy’s first at home, full of toil and no little defensive shape, but given how little of the ball they possessed and controlled after half time, 90 minutes was always going to be a push.

It would be cheap and easy to say that keeper Liam Bossin’s flap at a 76th minute left wing cross that led to Patrick Hoban’s opener was the trigger for Cork’s demise. By that juncture, the hosts were being pulled left and right, were infrequent visitors to the Dundalk half and had spent their best.

Healy set up conservatively – “I wasn’t going to start two up top against Dundalk, was I?” he mused afterwards - and his bank of five in midfield protected a resolute back four marshalled by Alan Bennett to the largest extent for an hour. Uniss Kargbo was sacrificed at half time for the industrious Alec Byrne as City reshaped into a virtual 5-4-1. Right-sided midfielder Henry Ochieng dropped deeper, whether by design or necessity, as Dundalk’s final quarter surge took shape.

Dylan McGlade warned Dundalk keeper Gary Rogers hands on the hour after cutting in from the left flank but that aside, the champions were untroubled behind midfield. They had plenty of artillery to unload of the bench too, and they got their just reward late on.

“They are a very good side,” agreed Healy. “Everyone knows that they could play two teams. I thought we had a good shape, the lads did what we asked them to do, but we gave away two soft goals.

“We will go again and get the lads ready for Saturday. That’s all I ask – give everything they’ve got and see where that takes us. We have good players who are hurting. That shows they care about the club – we all do."

"That’s what I learned as a player,” Healy whispered. “You give everything you’ve got, don’t give anybody excuses. I am a Cork man, if you don’t want to run through walls, then listen – you are wasting your time.”