Cork back on top but fail to impress

Cork City 1 UCD 0: Despite having to play with only 10 men for all but the opening 25 minutes, a game UCD made Cork City battle for the points in a dull Eircom League Premier Division tie at Turner's Cross last night.

Cork thereby regained top spot in the table from Derry City with a superior goal difference, but little about their performance suggested they can maintain their run to the finish line.

They looked extremely short of attacking ideas, for they owned the ball for 90 minutes and yet failed to turn that possession into goals.

A charitable view might be they were suffering the hangover of their elimination from the Uefa Cup last week, but manager Damien Richardson will not need to tell his players improvement is necessary if they are to prevail.

UCD, whose concentration on defence was scarcely a surprise given their numerical inferiority, provided typically spirited opposition.

The dismissal of Séamus Long, making his league debut, left them with an uphill battle. They were by then already a goal down and Cork were dominating.

Long had only himself to blame for the yellow card he attracted in the 22nd minute when he body-checked George O'Callaghan on the edge of the penalty area.

Within three minutes the referee again showed him yellow - though this time for what seemed nothing worse than a mistimed tackle on the elusive Liam Kearney.

Cork now had plenty of room to play ball and they enjoyed themselves, repeatedly testing goalkeeper Darren Quigley. Fortunately for UCD, he was in fine form. Time and again he rescued his team.

The shot that beat him arrived after 10 minutes. Kearney stretched the UCD defence with a glorious crossfield ball that found Roy O'Donovan in space on the right wing. He turned infield, eluded a couple of tackles, and hit one left-footed shot that brought a diving save from Quigley. The goalkeeper could not, however, hold the ball and John O'Flynn had a simple task in putting away the rebound.

Cork had several other scoring chances in an opening half of total domination but always Quigley was there to repulse them.

He was lucky, however, in the 35th minute when George O'Callaghan fired in a right-footed shot from 16 yards that Quigley did well to turn on to the crossbar and over.

Predictably UCD fell deeper into defence as the match progressed and they defended with such discipline that Cork found it difficult to create a clear opening.

The nearest Cork came to adding a second goal was when UCD's Kieran Harte deflected a left-wing cross from substitute Willie Bruton toward his own goal and forced another fine save from Quigley in the 83rd minute.

CORK CITY: Devine; Horgan, Bennett, Coughlan, Murphy; O'Donovan (Woods 73), O'Halloran. O'Callaghan, Kearney; O'Flynn, Fenn (Bruton 73).

UCD: Quigley; Kelly, Kenna, Long, O'Donnell; Murphy, Dicker, Harte, McWalter (Matthews 87); Dupuy, Martin (Byrne 80).

Referee: D McKeon (Dublin).