Great feeling to experience a third double while following Dundalk.
Cork did a great job stopping Dundalk from playing for about 60 minutes. However, against a physically filter and stronger team, this is hard to do for 120 minutes.
Eventually, Dundalk powered through Cork and got the goal. Cork really didn't look able to create anything.
Well done to both sets of fans for creating a great atmosphere.
Dunny just enjoy the celebrations. No need for the sarcasm. Better team won no doubt about that. We held ye for 65/70 mins but Dundalk were fitter and stronger than city. It's crystal clear that we need to take the Broom to a few of our players. JC'S subs were baffling. I don't suppose you saw anybody break up seats in our national stadium.
its the first cup final I can remember for both sides letting off bangers on both sides. I dont mind flares but I didnt like the bangers were bein flung! also the flares were thrown from the back to the pitch and I thought that was very dangerous considerin the strong blustery conditions.
Gary Cronin is he the right man to manage Longford Town?
To be fair Dan McDonnell does trojan work covering the league for the Indo, along with the other few print media lads for the other papers, we punch well above our weight in that regard.
As for the game, absolutely delighted with the win and that Ritchie got the winner, well deserved. Commisserations to Cork and their supporters, even though they had the better of the first half's chances, Caulfield's conservative streak came to the fore again and he never really went for it. Not the greatest of games which the conditions didn't help at all, 25k is a fantastic attendance given the day that was in it, a lot of neutrals wouldn't have bothered heading with that weather.
The LOI journos are great. It's the editors who are the problem.
On the game I thought Dundalk were very poor for long spells and were still easily the better team on the day. O'Donnell could hardly move but he's so clever he was still running midfield. If there was to be a goal it had to be from Horgan who was the best attacking player on show yesterday. Fully deserved win for Dundalk
54,321 sold - wws will never die - ***
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News editors can't wait to write stories about "football hooligans". It helps them to perpetuate the myth of the superior rubgy and GAA follower.
12 seats came lose when there was a surge after Richie scored an injury time winner. The club will pay the repair costs. What is the problem.
Frustrating day. I think we contained Dundalk for all but the first 10 and last 10 minutes of normal time. We largely nullified the threat from Towell who i think had scored 4 goals against us this season in 3 games prior to yesterdays final.
We had spells of sort of dominaance but created so little. Taking off O'Sullivan probably had to happen but it meant we had virtually nothing left to offer up front as Danny Morrissey was never going to hold anything up there.
Set pieces were supposed to be our best chance of creating chances and yet there were terrible yesterday. So many balls right into Rogers.
In the end our players had nothing left in the tanks after 90 minutes of constant running and that was the difference. Delighted for Benno getting man of the match, though could easily have seen it going to Sheppard or Kein O'Connor who both put in incredible shifts. To be fair 10 of our 11 starting players left absolutely everything they had on the field and the last one will hopefully never play for us again after yesterday.
It was the first thing said to me in work this morning.
The idiots that broke the seats need to be identified and hopefully with cctv it can be done. I'm surprised that they could be broken so easily. It doesn't bode well if another crowd decide to start a riot (England 1995). Some of the seats came out of the ground and the welding broke on others. I'm also dubious about the click bait "30 seats"...I count 12 in their photos!
On the match itself. Delighted with the result. I thought we would struggle when Gannon went off as Shields is not a natural right back. I think Cork should have targeted him more.
Really? The major columnists in the newspapers (I'm thinking, for example, Keith Duggan or Ken Earley in The Irish Times) never go near the LOI. Just looking at the IT and Examiner websites this morning, the Dundalk Cork match is hardly prominent. I remember - thirty or forty years ago - when the Cup Final was regarded as a major sporing event by the newspapers, and the coverage reflected that. I'd guess coverage of English football and Irish football was about 50/50 back then. It must be 80/20 now in favour of the Premiership, if not more. Credit to McDonnell, Liam Mackey and a few others, but they're lonely voices.
Very fair summary. I thought Cork played closer to their potential than Dundalk.
On a huge pitch that was nice and slick, they contained Dundalk superbly. The only problem was that Cork had no creativity, were unlikely to score, and had to keep up that effort for 120 minutes.
That is virtually impossible against a fitter and stronger team. A special mention to Alan Bennett, he was superb yesterday. I also thought Ross Gaynor did very well.
I don't doubt that Dundalk were fitter and stronger, but why is that?
Why should any team be fitter or stronger than any other at the end of the season?
I would have thought that talent, tactics, missing players etc would be areas where some teams could have an insurmountable advantage but surely fitness is some everyone should be able to achieve and shouldn't be the deciding factor. Do some teams still not take strength/fitness seriously?
Well they clearly work harder on that. Daryl Horgan is twice the size he was when he was at Cork. Gartland doesn't have a neck. We also pressed and pressed for 90 minutes. I'd love to see the ground covered by both teams. I think its something we seriously need to address for next season, though we're at least two years behind Dundalk in this.
I've been saying this for the past two years. The difference in strength and fitness between Dundalk and all the other teams is huge. With the quality in the league at an all-time low, any team that has a high level of fitness will do well and so often it's the difference in a game. Surely it's something every team should be working on? I look at us this season; I've never seen such a collection of woefully unfit players and it really told in games. I have no idea who the Dundalk fitness coach is but he deserves a huge amount of credit for their recent success. Other clubs should really follow his lead.
This is still a semi-pro league. Most teams are stepping up their fitness and conditioning but Dundalk are a couple of seasons (at least) ahead of the pack. Since 2013 there's a culture of dedication and professionalism at Dundalk that makes them so much greater than the sum of their parts. Strength and fitness training is a huge part of the culture.
But yeh, you wonder what a fully fit Danny North or James Chambers could achieve.
Last edited by seand; 09/11/2015 at 10:49 AM.
I thought it was a fairly awful game. Dundalk looked nervous and out of sorts, but we still a couple of levels above Cork, who offered nothing in attack in the first 110 minutes. Must have been a long, long journey home.
For me O'Donnell, Gartland and Boyle stood out for Dundalk, with Horgan showing touches of brilliance in the midst of a slew of misplaced passes. Good crowd, looked like a few more from Dundalk than Cork which was a surprise, but I think its safe to say there won't be 10,000 plus battling for tickets for the season opener against Wexford Youths in March!
It doesn't take 2 years to get fit. It takes desire and application. Like you say a professional attitude but I personally know a few guys who are involved in amateur sports and activities who would put some pros and semi pros to shame. Strength and fitness just seem to me to be the low hanging fruit that any team who are serious about wanting to be successful could relatively cheaply and easily access.
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