Top two go head to head

There was plenty of talk in Cork over the weekend about this Friday night's big game at Richmond Park. Given the way Cork City have been performing since the start of the season, there is a fair degree of confidence that Dave Barry's side can do something to shake the only team that has gone close to matching their remarkable start to the season.

Even now it's difficult to see the eventual winners of this season's championship coming from outside these two although, to be fair, neither manager is keen to be caught counting chickens and both were studiously playing down the importance of what has gone on so far after their respective games at the weekend.

Still, it's interesting that the two sides to make the running so far this year have been two of those to make the fewest changes to their panels over the summer months. St Patrick's Athletic dramatically overhauled their playing staff a year ago and did amazingly well to settle in when the season kicked off, but this time around only Martin Russell has been added to the squad that won the league last year.

Cork, meanwhile, continued to search for a solution to the problem they felt they had up front and, hardly surprisingly given the 19 goals they have scored in their eight straight wins to date, they reckon they've gone a long way towards solving it.

Not that either side always looks the complete article. There remain, for instance, lingering doubts about Barry's first-choice striking partnership. Jason Kabia, though undoubtedly a player who works tirelessly, has not contributed as much as he might up front (just one of the 19 goals actually). Newly arrived Gerald Dobbs has managed three in the same number of games while the most impressive thing of all about City's record to date is that, playing with a fairly consistent side, eight of their outfield players have managed to get themselves onto the scoresheet at some point.

St Patrick's Athletic, on the other hand, looked uncomfortable with their manager's preferred tactics in the game against Shelbourne last week and while Friday's contest with Sligo was a far more resounding endorsement of Liam Buckley's switch to the use of wingbacks, it will be interesting to see just how well settled the home side are on Friday against a considerably better looking side.

That, of course, is if Buckley decides to stick with the system and that is far from certain. It certainly appears that this is the way that he would like his team to play over the coming months, but he maintains that the system's introduction was only prompted by the fact that UCD had played with wide players against Cork a week before they travelled to Richmond Park.

Since then there have been various reasons given for persevering with it but given City's general adherence to a traditional 4-4-2 line-up, it might well be that will allow the visitors to set the agenda on Friday.

City have themselves, of course, used five in midfield from time to time and it was an approach used regularly by Barry before Colin O'Brien's injury late last season. However, at the moment the four-man midfield, and more pointedly the four-man defence, has served them well.

The leaders have conceded just two goals to date, a fact Barry attributes in no small part to goalkeeper Noel Mooney - a player who has not generally basked in the admiration of neutrals.

On Sunday, though, Mooney looked solid throughout and when called upon to make a good save, with the game still scoreless, he deprived James Mulligan of a goal that might well have altered the course of the game.

Things didn't seem to augur so well for Mooney when he performed rather disappointingly in Kiev a couple of months ago. However, his relationship with his defence has continued to improve and there has been little wrong with his league displays so far.

He should have his toughest test so far this weekend. Both Colin Hawkins and Eddie Gormley's goals against Sligo were superb and overall the movement of the St Patrick's players off the ball was outstanding.

They created a string of chances through the second half of the game and, unlike Harps at Turner's Cross, took them when it counted. If they play as well again this week then Cork will do very well just to contain them. If they don't it will be hard for them to prevent City moving to within one win of Derry City's Premier Division record (set midseason) of 10 consecutive victories. Either way it promises to be an intriguing encounter and perhaps the best pointer we've had yet as to which of the teams has the steel to go all the way in this championship race.