St Pat’s must wait for Europe after Cork City defeat

St Patrick’s Athletic 1 Cork City 2

For one night at least Cork City seemed to emerge from whatever strain of cup fever has been afflicting them of late but for Saint Patrick’s the end of season malaise persists and a lacklustre defeat here leaves Liam Buckley’s men with just six points to show from their last eight outings.

City are in no position to gloat having taken three from their last four and their most recent win in the league coming when the two sides last met back in late August. After this, the hosts might feel that John Caulfield and co. have a hex over them for the Dubliners had the bulk of possession and much the better of the chances yet couldn’t secure the single point that would have all but guaranteed European football again for next season.

For Caulfield, there are problems of a different kind. The win will be welcome but having been forced into four changes for this game, he again lost Danny Morrissey to a hamstring injury sustained while the striker was scoring a goal. The last time it happened was in the cup semi-final a few weeks back and while the 21 year-old has featured since, he hasn’t finished a game and must be something of a doubt at this stage for next month’s decider against Dundalk at the Aviva.

He would be a loss for his strike was a cracker with Karl Sheppard lofting the ball over a flatfooted St Pats back four for him to run on to. As Conor O’Malley came off his line, Morrissey seemed set to control the ball then have a choice to make as to how to best beat the goalkeeper but instead he short circuited the process by producing a wonderful cushioned volley that cleared his opponents before dropping nicely into the middle of his target.

It was all rather more attractive than Cork’s opener which involved City taking their third chance to turn the ball home after a John Dunleavy corner had been had initially been turned goalwards by Darren Dennehy after which that and a follow up attempt by Ross Gaynor were both cleared off the line before Steve Beattie put an end to the pinball.

After each setback, the locals picked themselves up and set about their opponents again but despite doing enough to keep Mark McNulty reasonably busy they clearly should have been making more of the chances they were creating around his area.

As City allowed themselves to be pressured into defending ever deeper, Jamie McGrath, Aaron Greene and Christy Fagan all went pretty close to getting their team back into it but it wasn’t until the 90th minute that Greene finally made the breakthrough with the midfielder firing home low from a tight angle after some neat build up play on the edge of the box.

The five minutes of injury time signalled moments later gave the home support hope and the place finally felt as if there was something vaguely significant at stake but despite a couple of late goalmouth scrambles, they couldn’t get the equaliser and must now look to Friday’s game against Sligo for their next chance to nail down their top four finish.

St Patrick's Athletic: O'Malley; Desmond, McEleney, Brennan (Bayly, 83 mins), Bermingham; Chambers; Byrne (Hoare, 62 mins), Greene, Morris (Verdon, 83 mins), McGrath; Fagan.

Cork City: McNulty; McSweeney, Bennett, Dennehy, Gaynor; Dunleavy, O'Connor; Beattie (O'Sullivan, 90 mins), Buckley (Kearney, 53 mins), Sheppard; D Morrissey (O'Flynn, 24 mins).

Referee: D Tomney (Dublin).