Mooney in the right mood

UEFA CUP PREVIEW:DAVE MOONEY has a monkey off his back that he'd much rather stayed on. Sunday night's 0-0 draw with St Patrick's Athletic was his first game without a goal since the first day of June and tonight in Valkeakoski in south west Finland, he plans to start a new scoring streak as his Cork City side aim to overcome a 2-2 aggregate scoreline against FC Haka in the Uefa Cup first preliminary round.

And manager Alan Mathews has called on his players to take some of that pressure off Mooney who has raced to the top of the Premier Division scoring charts.

"We need other players to step up," said Mathews yesterday at the team hotel in Tampere. "We need them to take some of the scoring responsibility off Dave."

But Mooney isn't so keen to share the workload. "I didn't mind the pressure of that," he claimed. "I want to score in every game. But it was disappointing against Pats. There weren't a huge amount of chances. We had more of the ball than they did but we didn't do too much going forward with it. I had one chance in the first half but I made a bit of a dog's dinner of it."

It'll probably be a similar team but Mathews did suggest John O'Flynn would be a substitute despite only three weeks ago suffering a suspected fractured ankle. It will, however, be a slightly different formation. "After playing against Haka the last time, I feel confident going into this one," said the striker. "It's just up to ourselves and how we approach it. Until we find out if we're playing five across the middle or 4-4-2, I won't know where I'm playing."

Haka boss Olli Huttunen will be without two of the team that beat VPS in the league on Sunday, left- back Pietari Holopainen and left-midfielder Mikko Innanen both exiting that game with injuries.

"We know Cork's strengths and weaknesses after the first leg," said Huttunen yesterday. "They have certain weak points we're going to hopefully exploit. We're aware of the strengths as well especially with corners and free-kicks. The second goal last time was from a free. It'll be a full house. So we have to show our people we can fight," he added.