Dunne pleased with preparations ahead of Cliftonville encounter

115 days have passed since competitive football graced the Turner's Cross turf but Cork City manager Tommy Dunne is confident his players will be fully fit and ready when they clash with Irish Premiership side Cliftonville on Monday night at the Cork venue.  

“We’ve been back since the 6^th of January, and we’ve got the guts of 30 sessions under our belt as a group", Dunne told Extratime.ie.

“We gave them their programmes over the off season, and they’ve all come back in good condition, which has allowed us to look after that little bit of work on the technical side of things.”

“For us, pre-season has gone really well - we had five days in Fota which was fantastic.

“The preparations couldn’t have been any better.”

Cliftonville are in the latter stages of their league campaign and sitting top of the pile. However preseason has gone will for Cork. An impressive 6-1 thrashing of First Division side Longford Town and a score draw with Leeds United has Dunne was in an optimistic yet realistic mood.

“We’re going to approach it as we would with any competitive game. We’re going to try to get ourselves right, and - first and foremost - give ourselves an opportunity to keep the tie alive.

“It is early in the season for us, but we approach it in the right frame of mind – as a competitive game - and looking as best as we can to try and get into the next round.”

One player the Cork defence will have to watch out for is forward and talisman Liam Boyce – the Northern Irish front man has bagged an impressive 20 goals in 28 appearances so far in 2012/13, and has reportedly been courted by a number of high-profile clubs.

“He [Boyce] is a physical player, and he’s a technically good player, but we can’t look at just one individual. We’ve got to look at their whole team, and as a team they’re very balanced and they’re very strong.

“It’s a tough task for us at this stage of the year. I wouldn’t be too fearful of it if we were up and running, but at this stage it’s going to be tough.

“They are the favourites for this tie of course, but we’ll give it a lash and see what happens.”