Tommy Dunne - On The Road

‘This is the part of my life you could call my life on the road.’

You’d be forgiven for thinking Tommy Dunne has been delving deep into the mind of Jack Kerouac’s semi-fictional character Sal Paradise in recent weeks. Cork City have, after all, been spending quite a bit of time On the Road.

Belfast (twice), Limerick, Bray (when the match didn’t even take place), Tallaght (twice), Drogheda and Sligo. That takes its toll, especially when in the same space of time there have been just three league games at Turner’s Cross. The endless, tedious motorway can be a drag and those long journeys home aren't made easier by results that many would argue their performances didn’t deserve.

And while it will all balance out by the end of the season, Dunne can’t help but bemoan the present run of fixtures, eight games in 29 days, which he says ‘will ask a lot of questions’ of his players.

“We've been doing a lot of travelling. It seems like we've been on the bus all the time since the league has started; between going to Belfast to going to Bray when that game was called off when we were already halfway up the road, it’s tough going. We've only had a couple of home games and from that point of view it's a little frustrating. But every Cork team has had to do that and in general, we've got a lot of matches. We've nine games in 29 days, two every week. It's going to ask a lot of questions of the group.”

One such question for the manager to ponder is settling on a partnership at the centre of defence. Dunne has had to change at least one of his defenders in every game so far, due to injuries, suspensions and Dan Murray’s work commitments.

Despite Mark McNulty’s very good form in goal, the defensive switches have led to a lot of infuriating late concessions and just one league clean-sheet, recorded at Thomond Park on the opening day.

“We haven't had the chance to get the defence settled,” Dunne admits. “Between suspensions and injuries, to fellas being missing for other reasons, we haven't had much luck. The lads who have played have done reasonably well but we need to settle down and have some consistency with the same personnel. But then again we need to rotate with so many players, we can't bleed them dry.”

While ideally he would have Dan Murray available for every game, the manager accepts the stalwart’s work commitments come first at this stage of his career. However, he did state that the former captain is not 100% out of every away game; the situation is a little more complicated than that.

“It's not written in stone with Dan if he will miss every away game, but he has commitments and last year he had an horrific injury and there were doubts if he would get over it. His job doesn't allow him to travel with shift work and he's at a stage in his life where he has to put food on the table for his family. Football doesn't last for ever, so that's what happens. I expect the people coming in to do a good job and we need more consistency there.”