Preview: City vs DLR Waves

Cork City welcome DLR Waves to Turners Cross on Saturday hoping to bounce back from last weekend’s loss away to Galway WFC, which left manager Danny Murphy with mixed feelings “It was disappointing, we conceded early goals from set pieces, but when I look back on the whole of the game, I’m happy with our performance. We can always be better, and people will look at the three early goals and concentrate on that but our style of play was good, we created some good chances in the first half. We need to start scoring those, being more ruthless. Galway really only had the set-pieces in the first half, if we had been as clinical as they were, it could be different game. But the in-game play, I thought we were the better team, but Galway always looked dangerous, especially from set-pieces.”

Looking ahead to DLR, Danny acknowledges the strength of Graham Kelly’s side, who are on a strong run, unbeaten in five in league and Cup with draws against Wexford Youths and Peamount among their recent results “I think DLR are a really good team, some excellent players and really well organised. They’re not one dimensional, they mix up their styles of play, they can play it out of the back, but when it’s on they’re not afraid to spin it in behind you and be a bit more aggressive.”

Asked if set-piece defending is a worry following the Galway game, Murphy replied “We’ve had the conversation as a group, I’ve said to the players that we’ve put a target on our back in terms of set-pieces, we’re going to have to defend them better because teams will try to exploit that. We have to stand up and say, that was a one off, it won’t happen again. I honestly believe the players will rise to that challenge.”

“Defending doesn’t start under a cross into the box though, we have to challenge ourselves to win the ball higher up the field, not let teams get through our midfield, putting the defence under pressure. We need to defend as a unit, be compact, force teams to areas we want and force mistakes from them. We’re not really creating enough chances yet but it’s coming, the main thing is we’re definitely not converting enough of the chances we create. But We have the bones of an excellent team here, we can be competitive and overall, I’m really happy with the direction we’re going.”

Cork City will be without Becky Cassin again and there are injury concerns over Lauren Singleton, Natalie O’Brien, and Chloe Atkinson.