O'Sullivan looking for Cork improvement in Tallaght

Cork Women’s FC travel to Tallaght Stadium today hoping to shore up their defence and pick up three valuable points against Shamrock Rovers, writes Chris O’Mahony.

 The Leesider’s defender Ericka O’Sullivan admits the team have not been good enough in recent games over 90 minutes but she’s looking to the positives from her sides recent games ahead of the trip to Tallaght.

 “We are conceding a lot, although our defence is good it’s just we give away silly goals. I think it comes down to the whole team though not just three or four people we need to defend all over the pitch,” she said.

 “But there are plenty of positives too, we did manage to score two goals against the best team in the league so that is encouraging and even though we gave away some silly goals we kept going and probably could have scored more. We had some good spells of possession, especially the build up to our first goal and Lynsey finished it off well.

“Our captain Emma Farmer has been out for the last couple of matches and she has been a major loss to us in the few games she has missed because she is very consistent at the back,” said the 21 year old.

 O’Sullivan feels that her team are finally coming together after a less than perfect start to the season.

 “Another positive for us is that there are numbers at training now and obviously everyone is putting in the effort so I don’t know why it’s now paying off more but we are still kind of bonding as a team. There are a lot of different players from last year I didn’t start back training myself until the middle of September. People were away for the summer and had summer jobs so the much earlier start to the season did not suit us but now we have our squad together and the numbers are good,” said the CIT student.

 “I think we have a good chance of winning in Tallaght. We did beat them last year and at the start of this season but it’s always a tight game. In one of the games up their last year we won 1 - 0 but it was a very late goal from us. I do think we have players to compete with most teams so hopefully we can pick up some points in Tallaght.

 “Everyone is very motivated, Maurice is a very good coach and I’m really enjoying training so hopefully we can get some results now,” she added.