Cork battle to overcome pitch and brave TEK

THE STUFF of Cup football. A tight little junior ground, hemmed in by a perimeter wall and ringed by local spectators scenting a kill on a cloying mudbath for the amateurs against a Cork side buttressed by English full-timers. In short, more trench warfare than football and Cork, to their credit, were prepared to get down and dirty, and dug in for a workmanlike victory.

Cork came and conquered, and will probably be glad if they never see the like of yesterday again. It's doubtful whether their player-manager Rob Hindmarch, once an FA Cup quarter-finalist with Sunderland against Sheffield Wednesday had ever come across anything quite like it.

Nor for that matter had his central defensive partner, Dave Hill Hindmarch's master buy from Lincoln at the start of the season. Visiting cross-channel players can be a tad feisty and hard-edged for some tastes but few, if any, have ever shirked a battle. Hill epitomised Cork's spirit, flinging himself around seemingly with relish.

Smiling ruefully, Hindmarch admitted: "It was never going to be an afternoon where there was going to be much football. I knew if we approached it right and battled, we'd win the game. We knew it was never going to be easy. They made it difficult for us and ii was a farce in the second-half."

Afterwards, the TEK player-manager Colm Phillips didn't so much smile as gleam. "They have to be proud of the way they played," he said, "especially as we haven't played a game of any kind, not even a friendly, since December 7th." Warming to his theme, Phillips added: "These guys matched them (Cork) for everything: fitness, commitment and organisation."

The pitch was just about playable, for about 30 minutes. Thereafter it seemed as if the playing arena was sinking, and its participants with it, or maybe it was just that the crowd kept rising in anticipation of an upset.

TEK performed with spirit and gusto, and though forced to play in their own half for much of the time, they counter-attacked incisively. There were scares aplenty in the Cork area, especially before the pivotal 26th minute goal by man of the match Hill.

Whenever the ball came within the proximity of the Cork penalty area, there was a hint of a goal, if only because the ball was liable to be miskicked completely or to sink without trace any moment, any place. It required immense discipline, a couple of goal-line clearances and no little charm for, Cork to keep TEK out.

Hence, the result was always in doubt until the last For that alone, the Leinster Senior League Division One side deserve immense credit, as indeed they do for the whole running of this game. Having spent an estimated £5,000 to ensure the tie was kept at their compact Stradbrook grounds, they deserved better than the prevailing conditions.

But they made the absolute most of their big day, installing a temporary stand and a marquee. The atmosphere was convivial and jovial. TEK were good hosts but never tugged the forelock. Their joint managers Phillips and Dermot Judge, Cup winners with Bray six years ago, devised a 4-5-1 system in which Declan Verhoeven was quickly supported from the flanks by the other young bucks, Gavin Merrigan and Keith Cunningham.

Soaking up the pressure and hitting swiftly on the break, TEK fired the first shot after four minutes by Judge, his commitment every bit as fierce as in his Bray days. A minute later Anthony Buckley was inches away for Cork after Pat Morley spun away to the left and pulled the ball back. And so it went on.

There were few clear-cut chances in the conditions, but countless half-chances and "three-quarter" chances. At times, if only fleetingly, it seemed TEK might be over-run as they bunched inside their area. John Caulfield and Pat Morley, perpetual motion, often needed all five TEK defenders to contain them. But, remarkably, TEK's counterattacks were proving more incisive.

Paul Wimbleton left the ball behind him inside the area from Merrigan's cross Verhoeven poking the ball past Jody Byrne at full stretch before the recovering Anthony Buckley cleared off the line. Byrne parried Foster's drive after Merrigan put him through. But behind TEK defence, Josh Moran conveyed all the serenity and calmness of a cat on a hot tin roof. Spilling practically every cross and slicing every clearance, Moran had the crowd in uproar when miskicking a goal kick along the ground to Philips and then repeating the trick from the pass back before Philips, whose faith was touching, passed back to Moran for a second time and at the third attempt Moran got some leverage into his kick.

Cork struck three minutes later. Caulfield's mobility earned the corner which Gareth Cronin delivered for Hill to rise well above Phillips to score with a downward header.

Cronin and Hill almost re-enacted a reprise of that strike on 38 minutes but Cork couldn't put TEK away Caulfield, Hindmarch and Cronin all failing to do so before Caulfield's 70th minute "goal" was rightly disallowed after Moran had been impeded.

TEK kept running. Philips brought himself off and went 4-4-2 with the first of three outfield substitutions, the last of them seeing the full-back he calls "our film star", alias Robbie Bell, who dreams of League of Ireland stardom in a certain lager commercial, play his first game since a knee operation four weeks ago.