THE LONG ARC of Cork football is of clubs rising from the flames, but these last few years have been of the same club yo-yoing between divisions.
They were relegated in 2020; promoted in 2022; relegated again in 2023; promoted again in 2024; and now, in 2025, they have been relegated once again.
This is a dispiriting state of affairs for the only LOI club in the country’s second city, and next week’s Cup final is a blessed coda on a miserable and rancorous season. Victory would be glorious for everyone and also an almighty break for the club’s accountants, as it would guarantee at least two rounds of European football between off-broadway trips to Finn Harps, Athlone, and Wexford.
City were officially relegated with defeat to Shelbourne on 13 October, but that fact has been an inevitability for months.
The single biggest reason underpinning relegation is evident in the fact it took City until their 22nd game of the season to keep a first clean sheet, at home to St Patrick’s Athletic.
That they then smithereened Pat’s 3-0 in the Cup semi-final went to show the potential latent in the squad. Their star performers on the night, Evan McLaughlin and Seani Maguire, had flashes of brilliance over the season but were ultimately too inconsistent across the league season to hoist City out of trouble. Not that the blame should be laid at their feet.
City’s defence was pitiful, and they conceded at least two goals in 18 of their 35 matches prior to the season ender against Derry City. The mid-season recruitment of Fiacre Kelleher and Rory Feely came much too late.
Bad luck has been a contributing factor, albeit injuries exposed how top-heavy the squad was. Ruairi Keating played seven games before rupturing his achilles, while the brilliant Cathal O’Sullivan had his season cruelly ended by another serious knee injury. Maguire, meanwhile, injured his hamstring in the third game of the season and missed two months’ action. He did not complete 90 minutes until 23 June.
This squad-building was not the only realm which raised questions as to the allocation of resources. Manager Tim Clancy quit in May, citing exhaustion and the lack of structure around him. He did not have a full-time assistant manager after Jamie Hamill left in March. Clancy subsequently revealed in an Off the Ball interview that he was living in a house-share with players, and so, as a father of four, spent most of his week commuting three hours each way from his home in Trim. Dublin is not the only Irish city suffering an affordable accommodation crisis.
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Much of this was righted for Clancy’s replacement Ger Nash, who stayed in his own three-bed house, while David Meyler was brought in as his assistant. Nash, however walked into a squad in flux.
Ger Nash. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
He quickly lost striker Djenairo Daniels, a short-term signing given a contract to the end of the season but an agreement he could move on in the summer window.
Milan Mbeng, an impressive signing ahead of the season, left for Shelbourne in July, with supporters furious at his attitude prior to leaving. His every touch was booed on the night that City were officially relegated.
Malik Djiksteeel, among City’s best performers in the first-half of the season, was initially expected to join St Mirren at the end of the season but instead he left in July as well. He was left out of the squad for a key league game against Sligo Rovers, with Nash citing a conversation with the player’s agent in explaining he wasn’t in the right mindset to play. Dijksteeel subsequently complained that this version of events was “completely false”.
Ultimately, none of the above trio were involved for the single most ruinous result of the league season: a 3-2 home collapse against Sligo Rovers in which City led 2-0 approaching the hour mark.
Given that avoiding relegation has been a hopeless pursuit since July, Nash’s guiding City to the Cup final is an impressive achievement, leavened as it is by the nagging feeling that some better decisions at the start of the season may have forestalled relegation in the first place. Owner Dermot Usher told fans this year that he has invested around €2 million of his own money into the club since taking over in 2023, but protests against his stewardship cranked up with intensity as the season went by. This led to the incongruous bookending of the Cup semi-final win: prefaced by angry protests; followed by delirious celebration.
That Usher is not a local has fed some of the protests – “End Kildare Rule in Cork” read one banner – but the chief complaints have been the instability that has led to such turnover among the squad and coaching staff, along with the pricing of one-off admission tickets at €25. Amid a season-low turnout of just 1,815 against Drogheda in June, the Shed End chanted, “€25, you’re having a laugh.”
Usher explained his pricing in a pre-season interview with the Currency.
“I believe the pricing is fair,” he said. “If you haven’t been buying a season ticket and have been dipping in and dipping out . . . I do not have a huge amount of sympathy . . . If you want to rock up on a Friday night once a month or once every six months that’s fine, but the price will be €25.”
If Usher felt he could justify the strategy, he should have communicated so better.
That Cork City have been relegated three times in five seasons is indicative of one of the great under-achievements in Irish sport. The club has the potential to be the biggest in the country, and a glance at their Cup final opponents will confirm that fact, given arguably Shamrock Rovers’ two best players this season, Josh Honohan and Matt Healy, are formerly of Cork City.
The City academy, headed up by Liam Kearney, is knocking out talent after talent, but City’s first team is not absorbing enough of them. Where the likes of Rovers and Pat’s can retain Victor Ozhianvuna and Mason Melia for at least a year of first-team football before selling at a significant profit, City have not been able to leverage their best talents for the same.
Cathal O’Sullivan did sign a pro contract but was set to leave for free at the end of the season before cursed injury struck, while David Dunne and Jaden Umeh did not sign pro terms and instead went to Monaco and Benfica respectively, and for nothing like the fees their potential should demand. But for as long as City are eddying between the foot of the Premier Division and the top of the First Division, Cork’s best talents will be winning games and making money for teams elsewhere.
Which leads to arguably the biggest problem of Cork’s latest demise: it accentuates the extent to which the LOI is dominated by Dublin clubs. With four of its 10 top-flight clubs based in the capital, the LOI is among the most centralised leagues in Europe. Of Uefa’s 55 member nations, if you exempt the leagueless Lichtenstein and the microscopic Gibraltar, only the Armenian Premier League has a higher proportion of top-flight clubs based in its capital than the LOI. (It’s 50% in Armenia, as opposed to 40% in Ireland.)
That the Premier League is among Europe’s highest at 35% shows that this is partly a legacy of Britain’s political policy of centralisation, to which Ireland has remained so faithful a century on from independence.
Nothing claiming to be national benefits from its being over-centralised in Dublin, and the LOI is no different. The chasm between capital and elsewhere is growing, with Galway, Sligo, and Waterford all among the bottom half of a Dublin-dominated table.
When we speak of the League’s boom, we speak too often of a boom in Dublin.
For Cork City, this league season has been another depressing bust.
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Cork City's latest relegation a dispiriting state of affairs in Dublin-dominated Premier Division
THE LONG ARC of Cork football is of clubs rising from the flames, but these last few years have been of the same club yo-yoing between divisions.
They were relegated in 2020; promoted in 2022; relegated again in 2023; promoted again in 2024; and now, in 2025, they have been relegated once again.
This is a dispiriting state of affairs for the only LOI club in the country’s second city, and next week’s Cup final is a blessed coda on a miserable and rancorous season. Victory would be glorious for everyone and also an almighty break for the club’s accountants, as it would guarantee at least two rounds of European football between off-broadway trips to Finn Harps, Athlone, and Wexford.
City were officially relegated with defeat to Shelbourne on 13 October, but that fact has been an inevitability for months.
The single biggest reason underpinning relegation is evident in the fact it took City until their 22nd game of the season to keep a first clean sheet, at home to St Patrick’s Athletic.
That they then smithereened Pat’s 3-0 in the Cup semi-final went to show the potential latent in the squad. Their star performers on the night, Evan McLaughlin and Seani Maguire, had flashes of brilliance over the season but were ultimately too inconsistent across the league season to hoist City out of trouble. Not that the blame should be laid at their feet.
City’s defence was pitiful, and they conceded at least two goals in 18 of their 35 matches prior to the season ender against Derry City. The mid-season recruitment of Fiacre Kelleher and Rory Feely came much too late.
Bad luck has been a contributing factor, albeit injuries exposed how top-heavy the squad was. Ruairi Keating played seven games before rupturing his achilles, while the brilliant Cathal O’Sullivan had his season cruelly ended by another serious knee injury. Maguire, meanwhile, injured his hamstring in the third game of the season and missed two months’ action. He did not complete 90 minutes until 23 June.
This squad-building was not the only realm which raised questions as to the allocation of resources. Manager Tim Clancy quit in May, citing exhaustion and the lack of structure around him. He did not have a full-time assistant manager after Jamie Hamill left in March. Clancy subsequently revealed in an Off the Ball interview that he was living in a house-share with players, and so, as a father of four, spent most of his week commuting three hours each way from his home in Trim. Dublin is not the only Irish city suffering an affordable accommodation crisis.
Much of this was righted for Clancy’s replacement Ger Nash, who stayed in his own three-bed house, while David Meyler was brought in as his assistant. Nash, however walked into a squad in flux.
He quickly lost striker Djenairo Daniels, a short-term signing given a contract to the end of the season but an agreement he could move on in the summer window.
Milan Mbeng, an impressive signing ahead of the season, left for Shelbourne in July, with supporters furious at his attitude prior to leaving. His every touch was booed on the night that City were officially relegated.
Malik Djiksteeel, among City’s best performers in the first-half of the season, was initially expected to join St Mirren at the end of the season but instead he left in July as well. He was left out of the squad for a key league game against Sligo Rovers, with Nash citing a conversation with the player’s agent in explaining he wasn’t in the right mindset to play. Dijksteeel subsequently complained that this version of events was “completely false”.
Ultimately, none of the above trio were involved for the single most ruinous result of the league season: a 3-2 home collapse against Sligo Rovers in which City led 2-0 approaching the hour mark.
Given that avoiding relegation has been a hopeless pursuit since July, Nash’s guiding City to the Cup final is an impressive achievement, leavened as it is by the nagging feeling that some better decisions at the start of the season may have forestalled relegation in the first place. Owner Dermot Usher told fans this year that he has invested around €2 million of his own money into the club since taking over in 2023, but protests against his stewardship cranked up with intensity as the season went by. This led to the incongruous bookending of the Cup semi-final win: prefaced by angry protests; followed by delirious celebration.
That Usher is not a local has fed some of the protests – “End Kildare Rule in Cork” read one banner – but the chief complaints have been the instability that has led to such turnover among the squad and coaching staff, along with the pricing of one-off admission tickets at €25. Amid a season-low turnout of just 1,815 against Drogheda in June, the Shed End chanted, “€25, you’re having a laugh.”
Usher explained his pricing in a pre-season interview with the Currency.
“I believe the pricing is fair,” he said. “If you haven’t been buying a season ticket and have been dipping in and dipping out . . . I do not have a huge amount of sympathy . . . If you want to rock up on a Friday night once a month or once every six months that’s fine, but the price will be €25.”
If Usher felt he could justify the strategy, he should have communicated so better.
That Cork City have been relegated three times in five seasons is indicative of one of the great under-achievements in Irish sport. The club has the potential to be the biggest in the country, and a glance at their Cup final opponents will confirm that fact, given arguably Shamrock Rovers’ two best players this season, Josh Honohan and Matt Healy, are formerly of Cork City.
The City academy, headed up by Liam Kearney, is knocking out talent after talent, but City’s first team is not absorbing enough of them. Where the likes of Rovers and Pat’s can retain Victor Ozhianvuna and Mason Melia for at least a year of first-team football before selling at a significant profit, City have not been able to leverage their best talents for the same.
Cathal O’Sullivan did sign a pro contract but was set to leave for free at the end of the season before cursed injury struck, while David Dunne and Jaden Umeh did not sign pro terms and instead went to Monaco and Benfica respectively, and for nothing like the fees their potential should demand. But for as long as City are eddying between the foot of the Premier Division and the top of the First Division, Cork’s best talents will be winning games and making money for teams elsewhere.
Which leads to arguably the biggest problem of Cork’s latest demise: it accentuates the extent to which the LOI is dominated by Dublin clubs. With four of its 10 top-flight clubs based in the capital, the LOI is among the most centralised leagues in Europe. Of Uefa’s 55 member nations, if you exempt the leagueless Lichtenstein and the microscopic Gibraltar, only the Armenian Premier League has a higher proportion of top-flight clubs based in its capital than the LOI. (It’s 50% in Armenia, as opposed to 40% in Ireland.)
That the Premier League is among Europe’s highest at 35% shows that this is partly a legacy of Britain’s political policy of centralisation, to which Ireland has remained so faithful a century on from independence.
Nothing claiming to be national benefits from its being over-centralised in Dublin, and the LOI is no different. The chasm between capital and elsewhere is growing, with Galway, Sligo, and Waterford all among the bottom half of a Dublin-dominated table.
When we speak of the League’s boom, we speak too often of a boom in Dublin.
For Cork City, this league season has been another depressing bust.
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Cork City Dermot Usher LOI yo yo club