Dunne delighted with late reversal of fortune

Having suffered more than their fair share of last minute disappointments over the past few weeks it was a relief for Cork City to finally do the same to someone else on Monday night as they turned a 0-1 deficit against Bray Wanderers into a 2-1 win with two goals in the final few minutes of the game.

Ian Turner fired home the first from the penalty spot on 87 minutes and Shane Duggan snuck in a header three minutes into injury time. It was a timely reversal of fortune for manager Tommy Dunne who has led his team through a traumatic few weeks. Speaking to extratime.ie after the game he was happy to share his thoughts on what has been a difficult time for him, and his players.

“We’ve been through the wringer, yeah, to put it mildly. I was just saying there earlier on, the last three games have mentally torn the lads asunder. After playing so well in two of them and ending up with draws, and then up in Dundalk we hit a complete wall and were well beaten. So tonight, albeit we were hammered in the first half, we turned a corner in the second half and we came out and gave it everything.”

As Dunne said, the performance of his players in the second half was a marked improvement on a first half that was dominated by Bray. Pat Devlin’s side looked sharp in the opening period and really took off after going into the lead through a Kevin Knight header on 25 minutes.

“The boys were dead on their feet in the first twenty minutes, don’t mind the last twenty”, said Dunne, “so for them to dig so deep in the second half and try and salvage a win for us shows the character that’s in our group. At half time we were probably the lowest we’ve ever been, but then they dug deep and got the result and fair play to them, every single one of them. They deserved that because, as you say, they’ve been through the wringer” 

The game swung on two changes, in and around the  hour mark, when the excellent Kieran Marty Waters had to go off for Bray on 57 minutes and, four minutes later, Dunne replaced midfielder Gearoid Morrissey with striker Danny Morrissey. The effect was dramatic.

“Bray bossed the first half... we were well outplayed and it could have been out of sight to be truthful. But I knew at 1-0, a bit like ourselves in previous weeks when we were 1-0, there’s always a chance that you can get back into the game. We changed our approach a bit in the second half. We put on a few fresh legs and went with 4-4-2 as with the 4-3-3 in the first half we just didn’t seem to have the urgency and the play was a bit slow. But when we got it further up the pitch young Danny Morrissey and Denis Behan and Daryl Kavanagh did really, really well. We started to get crosses into the box, we started to get into good areas of the pitch and we eventually started to create things. We needed to pick the tempo up and when we did that with about half an hour to go we looked a different team.”

Even after the late equaliser both teams continued to try and win the game which provided some hairy moments for both sets of fans. Ultimately, it was Cork City that struck an even later killer blow when Shane Duggan got to the rebound from an Ian Turner shot and just about squeezed a header past Darren Quigley.

“We were definitely going to try and win it”, said Dunne, “and Bray were no different. They had a few chances on the break in the second half but from our side of things I think we probably had the clear-cut ones. And for us, as a group, to get the three points here tonight is a huge result for us”.