EVEN IN AN opening-day defeat, Ruairi Keating’s late reply for Cork City against Bohemians on Friday night could prove an important goal for the Leesiders in its own way.
The 12 feral minutes that followed Keating’s goal not only changed the complexion of the endgame but probably changed the perceptions of some of the 6,000-odd home fans who spilled out of Turners Cross disappointed but, crucially, not deflated.
Keating, by far City’s standout, had spent his night careening around the pitch like a bumper car, craving collisions and turning lost causes into hairy moments for the Bohs rearguard.
His goal had been foreshadowed in the first half when he was inches from nicking a ball off the toe of Bohs ‘keeper James Talbot. Keating carried with him the same energy in the 83rd minute, reacting most sharply to a botched attempted trap by the former Ireland call-up and rolling the ball into an empty net at The Shed end. A blitz of Bohs’ box ensued as City sought an equaliser, but Talbot threw himself on one final grenade to see his side to victory.
The thing is, based on the 82 minutes which preceded Keating’s goal, City are going to need the striker to put in a selfless heave most weeks, and they’re going to need others to join him.
The club’s new owner, Kildare businessman Dermot Usher, gave an interview to Gavin Cooney of this parish midweek in which he stressed that City’s aim for the season was higher than to simply avoid relegation. “I am not trying to compete with Shamrock Rovers and Derry in terms of budget,” Usher told The42. “There are still two European places below that. Pat’s have a decent enough budget after that, but after that we are more than able to compete.”
It sounded highly optimistic and, while Friday’s occasion at a heaving Cross was the perfect illustration of why Usher is well within his rights to be excited about his acquisition, events on the field might have tempered his short-term expectations.
Usher’s “nerves were shot” as far back as Thursday afternoon and on Friday night, Colin Healy’s young side seemed dazzled by the spotlight under which they found themselves. They won’t all be televised games in front of expectant, capacity crowds, of course, but if their dearth of quality in possession is any sort of projection of what’s to come this year, City are going to have to scrap to keep their heads above water.
And that’s fine because, in reality, simply avoiding relegation would at least offer pause for breath.
For well over a decade, the club has lurched from peak to trough and back again in a manner more befitting Harchester United than a real-life football club. Thankfully the club itself — through the tireless work of its support cast — managed to avoid being killed off permanently, but there would be no harm if this 2023 season was used to simply set the scene for more grandiose future episodes.
Usher, who only finalised his takeover earlier this month, has legitimately impressive plans in the short-term, including the staging of several events this year with which he aims to engage businesspeople all over Cork. A year’s worth of stability would at least allow him to get his feet under the desk and burnish those new relationships.
The club’s catchment area remains its greatest untapped resource, not merely in terms of recruiting playing talent or bringing local investors to the table, but also with regard to putting bums in seats. At a League of Ireland level, only Cobh Ramblers prevent their neighbours across the harbour from ostensibly having a monopoly on a county with a population of well over half a million people.
City’s core fanbase is already the club’s biggest asset. Last year, in the second tier, average attendances at Turners Cross rose by 40% — from 2,505 during City’s last Premier Division campaign to 3,517 as Healy’s men sealed promotion back to the big show.
If the club and its new ownership are to tap further into a latent base around Cork, Turners Cross will naturally need to become more widely known as a fun place to be on Friday nights.
Off-field, Usher has his own ideas as to how the club can modernise and improve an already enjoyable matchday experience. But even more important than such trimmings is what happens between the white lines, where a bit of old-school Rebel belligerence and goals like Ruairi Keating’s a couple of nights ago will remain the most potent advert for Cork City as they seek to reestablish themselves as a top-flight force.
A word, too, on Bohemians, whose full-to-the-brim away end contributed so much to Friday night’s sense of occasion while their players were busy taking the sting out of the other three stands: Bohs shouldn’t have to check over their shoulders too often for Cork City in particular this year but, in a broader sense, it’s unclear as to whether they’ll spend 2023 looking mostly up or down.
Declan Devine’s side were never going to look like a vintage Bohs outfit when, in a literal sense, they are the exact opposite: more than half of their starting 11 on Leeside were off-season recruits, and both their backline and frontline consisted of almost entirely new combinations.
The latter is one cause for excitement: Bohs’ front trio of James Akintunde and Dylan Connolly to either side of Jonathan Afolabi sent an electric charge through Turners Cross on the occasions in which they broke forward in unison.
And while Akintunde and Connolly are new faces, it’s the unleashing of proverbial new signing Afolabi — whose first year at the club was curtailed by injury just three games into last season — which might prove most revelatory for the Dubliners.
The former Celtic man didn’t have it all his own way on Leeside but his physical profile will see him plague League of Ireland centre-halves provided his injury profile doesn’t take a further downturn.
Still just 23, Afolabi now looks a far more rounded player than the predominantly counter-attacking forward who earned a handful of caps for Republic of Ireland U21s at the turn of the decade. He joins the dots with his back to goal and, in all, was probably Bohs’ most effective player outside of man of the match Ali Coote, to whom Afolabi will look for even better service when Dundalk visit Dalymount Park on Friday night.
Bohs’ recent seasons have wound up being more about the journey than the destination and, ahead of Friday’s curtain-raiser, one of their 700-strong travelling contingent decided to play out that metaphor quite literally. Paul Reynolds, described by one of his peers as “a mad Galway man who supports Bohs”, hopped on his bike on Thursday and cycled to Turners Cross from Dublin “for the craic”.
“Would prefer the train — with cans — myself”, remarked one of Paul’s fellow diehards, “but to each his own.”
As well as the fact that you can pick up a bit of momentum on the 120-kilometre decline between Cork and Thurles, Paul’s swing-around to Dublin was surely comparably painless in the knowledge that, for this week at least, Bohs are top of the league.
