Rivals look to President’s Cup for pointers on how title race might pan out

Having hurtled through their respective pre-seasons, 2016 title contenders Dundalk and Cork City come face to face in the President's Cup on Saturday afternoon at Turners Cross where both sides will be hoping to get a sense of how their chief championship rival is shaping up for the campaign head.

It's a new group but the spirit is good," says John Caulfield whose side trailed the champions by 11 points and around 20 goals at the end of last season after which they were narrowly beaten by Richie Towell and co. in the cup final. "We're looking to see where we're at with the new players that we've brought in and Dundalk with give us an indication of that. We've created a lot of chances in preseason, albeit against weaker teams, now we'll get an idea of how they do against Dundalk who we know will have their strongest team out.

“It’s a good game for us to have,” continues the City boss. “We know how good they are. They have set the bar. And they’ve kept 99 per cent of the squad; okay they’ve lost Towell but they got (Patrick) McEleney. So, yeah, this will be a good indication of where we are.”

Since losing on penalties to Rockmount in the Munster Senior Cup at the end of January, City have done well in successive friendlies with a reshaped side scoring a lot of goals as new players have settled in well.

The Dennehy brothers, Dan Murray and Ross Gaynor amongst those to have gone but Greg Bolger has been recruited to anchor the new look side in midfield with Kenny Browne a new option in central defence and Sean Maguire set to get an opportunity to really show what he can do after struggling to get game time at Oriel Park last season.

Stephen Kenny let the young striker go and to judge by the team's strike-rate against the likes of Drogheda United, Cliftonville and, in particular, Waterford United, over the last few weeks, he doesn't have any great cause for regrets. Ciaran Kilduff has flying in pre-season with five goals while McEleney has shown signs of settling in well although, again, this game against Cork will prove a better idea of quite how the side is shaping up as it targets a third straight title.

“You don’t want to be going into the start of the season on the back of a loss so it’s important to us that we win the game and be competitive,” says Stephen O’Donnell whose continued fitness could be a key factor in determining whether Dundalk can make it three in a row. “It’d be nice to go into the season winning against one of the strongest teams in the league - our closest challengers the last few seasons - so we’ll be looking to go to win the game. We won it last year so we want to keep the trophy.”

City had plenty of concerns on the injury front themselves last season but John Dunleavy has come through pre-season well himself and is optimistic about the team's prospects generally as they head into the new campaign.

“You need that bit of luck, I know I do, because I had my share of problems last year but so far we’re looking good,” he says. “We’ve recruited well. I think we’ve as strong a squad there now as we’ve ever had in Cork. I’m there five years now and it’s certainly the strongest squad there’s been in that time. Competition for places in fierce and the manager will have a few headaches.

“They’re an expectant crowd in Cork but it’s a big club and it is time that we had our hands on some silverware; hopefully this year we can go and do that. They’re the best fans to play in front of. Turners Cross is a fantastic place to play football and it’ll be great on Saturday. It’s not a warm-up game anyway. It matters to both teams and I have no doubt that one team will be taking it as seriously as the other.”

Both squads are close to full strength for the game, which kicks off at 2.0 with Caulfield hoping that Steven Beattie, Mark O’Sullivan and Kevin O’Connor will all be available to feature leaving only John Kavanagh as a certain absentee. Kenny expects Daryl Horgan, Dane Massey, David McMillan and Sean Gannon to come into contention with Ciaran O’Connor another week or so away.