Cabinteely's Jack Tuite relishing Friday's crucial playoff second leg away to Longford

After a scoreless draw during Cabinteely’s first-leg of the Playoff at home to Longford Town, Jack Tuite believes that the onus is on the Midlander’s to have a go at Pat Devlin’s side during Friday’s second leg at City Calling Stadium.

Tuite impressed for the Green and White’s on Friday evening, helping his side to a hard-fought clean sheet along with defensive partner Conor Keeley.

“I thought a draw was probably a fair result in the end,” the former Derby County trainee told extratime.ie.  

“I thought both teams had a couple of chances in the first-half that we probably should have took but they also came out well in the first fifteen minutes, but I thought we dealt with it well after that.

“We know how they like to play. They like to play out from the back and play passing football and you could see that in the first leg. They played it around well, but they didn’t really cause us too much trouble.

“I don’t think anything changes from our behalf in the second leg. I think they’re going to come and try win the game.

“We’re going down to there and the onus is on them to go at us. But, we’re going to try and get a win and get into the next round.”

With this being Cabinteely’s first playoff odyssey since their introduction into the League of Ireland in 2015, Tuite added that the achievement is a sign of the club’s progress in recent years.

“It has been great for the lads who have been here for the past two or three years.

“We’ve built a fairly good squad over the past few years and we’ve kept most of the same players, so it’s been good in terms of getting experience for the younger players.

“We’re learning all the time and it’s great to be in the Playoffs. But we want to win the second leg and go on to play Drogheda.

“Playoffs are similar to a cup final but they’re different in them having two legs,” the 22-year-old finished.

“It’s not really a cup final because you can’t win it in the first-leg but you can lose it if you concede a couple of goals so I think both teams would have liked to have kept the tie alive ahead of the second leg and they did.”