WNL Preview: City vs Peamount

Cork City welcome Peamount United to Turners Cross for a 5pm kick-off in what is becoming an exciting end to the Women’s National League. The Peamount team features Aine O’Gorman, who starred for Ireland in Tuesdays World Cup qualifying playoff against Scotland. The qualification has resulted in a huge interest in the National side which City manager Danny Murphy, hopes will translate to interest in the league at home.

“It would be amazing to get a big crowd out to the game, with what the National Team did in the play-off on Tuesday night, it can only drive interest in the Women’s game. Like the men’s game, going to the UK to see those players who play there is difficult for parents and kids. But you’ve got Aine O’Gorman at Turners Cross on Saturday who was brilliant on Tuesday night and then you’ve got Cork City players who I know will feature for the Senior National Team in the future and for young girls playing the game, you couldn’t have better heroes.”

“If you want to watch some of our best players and learn from them, it’s all about going out and watching your local team and supporting them.”

Peamount are in a title race which sees four teams – Wexford Youths, Peamount, Shelbourne and Athlone Town - separated by just three points. While Peamount will be strong favourites, City will not make it easy. “We want to go out and be competitive. The players have improved every game and every training session is a little sharper and better than the one before” says Murphy “we’re all ambitious, we want to win things and be successful next season, we want to be right up there with the top four teams in the country. This is a great opportunity to see how far we’ve come.”

“We’ve played Peamount twice this season, lost 7-0 and 8-0, it was my first game in charge, so this is really one I’ve been looking forward to. Me and James will get a really good idea of where we’re at on Saturday. Those losses were awful, but we believe we’ve improved and that we can compete with anyone and cause them problems. We showed at Shelbourne that we have good performances in us.”

It’s mostly good news on the injury front, but there are a couple of players who will miss out. “We’ve got our International players back from the Irish U19s, we gave them Tuesday off but they trained Wednesday and Friday. Eva, Ellie, Chloe, and Laura are back. Hannah Walsh is out, she got a concussion playing for UCC during the week. Orlaith Deasy is out, which is a pity, she’s had some bad luck and it’s been difficult for her to get a steady run of games and we’ll miss her. Aoibhinn Donnelly is back from injury. We’re going to leave Fiana and Heidi with the U17s for their Cup Semi-final, they deserve to finish out the competition with their team-mates. Everyone looking forward to it, but it’s giving me some tough decisions.”