Now that the dust has settled on the first round of fixtures Cork City sit 9th with 7 points from their 9 games with 3 losses on the bounce the most recent of these coming in a 4-1 loss to Shamrock Rovers on a rescheduled Monday night fixture after the FAI failure of the cancellation of the game in February.
Cork City have been left very unlucky this season on the injury front with Evan McLaughlin and Harry Nevin missing the start of the season with McLaughlin only returning in the last 2 games while Nevin has not seen in the pitch in this current Premier Division campaign.
Cork City’s current injury list is Sean Maguire who is expected to return at the end of the month, Greg Bolger who is said to be featuring in Dalymount Park on Friday night, Malik Dijksteel, Ruairí Keating who is out for the season after suffering a ruptured Achilles at the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium and Cathal O’Sullivan who has returned but missed a stint of games at the start of the season.
But just how much is this down to unfortunate nature? Cork City made 8 signings in the summer, each of these being of the age 23 or under with 7 of these arriving from abroad bar Alex Nolan who arrived from St.Patrick’s Athletic. These signings have mainly been positive with Benny Cuoto and Milan Mbeng quickly becoming fan favorites.
The signings don’t seem to be the problem, rather the amount is the discussion point. Cork City had 9 departures during the off season which left them with one less than the previous season. They also have 23 players signed on professional contract currently at the club with 6 of these players being in their teen years: Cathal O’Sullivan, Arran Healy, Freddie Anderson, Matthew Murray, Josh Fitzpatrick and Matthew Kiernan
The average age of a Cork City starting player so far this season being 23.5 years of age.
Cork City only have 3 players of the ages 25 or over being Sean Maguire, Ruairí Keating and Greg Bolger who have all spent stints out of the team with injury.
Cork City also went into the 2023 season with a thin squad so is it naive from them to do the same again and not recruit experience? As a great Alan Hansen said you can’t win anything with kids and Cork City may be finding this out the hard way and could they be nose diving into another season in the First Division?