Sullivan rues loss of Purcell

Cork City striker Vinny Sullivan believes Tadhg Purcell will be a huge loss after their attacking partnership came to an end at Bray on Friday night.

Sullivan has been in brilliant form so far this season and part of that has been down to his relationship with the Dubliner, whose loan at the club ended over the weekend.

But with Purcell heading back to England the Dungarvan man admits he’s sorry to see him go.

“Playing with Tadhg has been great. I thought we struck up a great partnership over the past couple of months.

“Obviously he wants to go back to England and try to sort himself out there but maybe if things don’t work out he might come back to us with a bit of luck.

“He’s going to be missed because he was great for us,” he said.

The partnership called it a day in the perfect way, though, with the most straightforward of wins and Sullivan believes the 3-0 win over the Seagulls was the team’s best performance of the campaign to date.

“It probably was. We put in a very good performance, especially with it being away from home. Playing any team away from home is going to be a tough game so to get the three points with a 3-0 win is great.”

Sullivan scored the third following a fantastic through ball from Shane Duggan and although he’s happy to have continued his good run in front of goal, he was eager to focus on the team performance rather than the personal showing.

“Obviously I’m happy to be scoring goals at the moment but in general I thought it was a great team performance. We got three great goals and it was great to be going in at half-time 2-0 up.

“We just had to make sure to keep it tight in the opening 10 or 15 minutes in the second half not to concede and then push on.”

Purcell’s early goal was a huge help too: “It settled us down really and the second gave us a great cushion.

“Not conceding at the start of the second half was vital because they were always going to come at us and we knew we’d get a reaction. But we saw it through and built on it and the third really killed the game off.”

In addition, the acquisition of a second clean-sheet was a huge boost for the team too and Sullivan says that once they keep tight defensively, they’re always likely to score goals.

“It’s massively important. If we can keep a clean-sheet, we’ll always fancy ourselves to score goals and therefore pick up more wins. The clean-sheet gives us confidence too.”