WFAI Cup Preview: Athlone vs City

Cork City FC Women return to Evoke.ie FAI Cup action this weekend with a tough away trip to Athlone Town FC, kick-off on Saturday is at 7pm and the game is live on LoITV. Tommy Hewitt’s midland’s side have risen to third in the table, just six points off league leaders Shelbourne, with a game in hand following a brilliant run of form.

Speaking to Danny Murphy on Thursday this week, doesn’t dwell on his sides last trip to Athlone, where City should have come away with a draw. He knows this will be a tougher test. “We went up there and we probably surprised them a little bit. They rested a few players and thought they’d get a result. I don’t think that’s being disrespectful or anything, it’s just managing their players within their squad. They bring Emily Corbet on at half time, fantastic player, she gets one chance and it’s a goal. They’re not going to fall for that this time, they know now that we can perform and if we play to our level of ability that we can have periods we dominate a game.”

“I don’t worry about other teams, I worry about us at the moment, can we get through 90 minutes without mistakes and errors. I look at Bohs where we dominate the game for long periods, we have loads of positives and things I’m really happy with, but I want to win games and we need to perform for the full 90. I knew coming in it wasn’t going to be easy, but we’re improving all the time. We’ve stopped just playing in our own half, we’re playing more aggressively, in the opposition’s half. We just need to be more productive there.”

The biggest concerns this weekend are injuries and illness. “We have fifty million injuries” Murphy laughs, resigned to the losses “Ciara McNamara and Becky Cassin are both out sick, Dan Burke has been ill all week, Orlaith Deasy sick too, hasn’t trained. Natalie O’Brien still hasn’t trained coming back from injury, but we’re hoping she may be able to play a part. We have Lauren Singleton back, but Nadine Seward is out. We have some brilliant players on the fringes and some really strong girls coming through from underage, but you’d prefer to do it the right way, and not just throw them in to 90 minutes, saying off you go. It’s one of the biggest frustrations this year, we’ve been constantly chopping and changing due to injuries and illness. So, we’ve not been able to settle on a consistent team. It is what it is, we just have to keep trying to build on what we’ve been implementing.