WPD Preview: Peamount vs City

PRL Park is this weekends destination, and Champions Peamount United the opposition, for Cork City FC in the SSE Airtricity Women’s Premier Division. 

It was a sobering return to action last weekend for Cork City. After a break of three weeks without a game, the challenge of a rejuvenated Wexford FC team proved too much. Two second-half goals, scored in two minutes in Ferrycarrig Park, gave the Wexford side their fifth successive win. 

The break contributed to a performance that Manager Danny Murphy admits was “sloppy” at times. He’s keen to put that right this weekend though Peamount will be just as challenging. “Saturday wasn’t a great performance, we didn’t perform very well If I’m honest, we didn’t train well in the lead up to the game and we carried that into them game. The break affected us a little, all season when we’ve trained well, we’ve played well and Saturday we were a little sloppy on the ball.” 

“I guess the positive we can take is that while we didn’t perform well, we lost 2-0 and both those goals came in a minute. Keeping the score down when we’re not playing well is something we haven’t been good at, after the second we stopped it and rallied but we didn’t really threaten their goal. We need to test keepers a bit more, take those shots from outside the box and there’s other aspects we can improve on and develop. 

“We were a bit light on attacking options at the weekend, Christina Dring was injured during the warmup so we couldn’t bring her on. We should have more players available this weekend, we are bringing a few players in and hopefully we can have them all sorted and registered in time for the weekend because I think they can make a difference to us straight away. We’ll be adding quality in the window and that’s going to increase that competition for places.” 

“There will be changes this weekend and it’s down to the players then that when they get opportunities, can they keep their place on the team.” 

Peamount have had a mixed season by their own high standards but are a squad playing for Champions league places after this week’s draw pitted them against FC Dinamo-BSUPC from Belarus in Round 1. The won last time out against bottom-placed Sligo Rovers, bouncing back from a disappointing All Island League loss to Shamrock Rovers, 

“People will say that Peamount haven’t been as consistent over the last few weeks as you expect from them, but they’re Champions and still an exceptional squad of players. While we want to go into every game with the belief we can win it, I think this weekend we do have to focus on being a little more defensively organised. We’ll probably be looking more to counter and nick a goal than trying to impose our game on Peamount. We obviously are going to need to improve a lot on last Saturday, from a footballing and effort point of view, if we do that, we can give ourselves every chance.” 

The game kicks off at 5pm in PRL Park, if you can’t make the game, you can watch it live on LoITV.