Stand up for Cork City!!!

At last I decided to write my first post completely in english.

Today I'm gonna talk about what's happened last Monday, the 14th.
Me, Edo, Danilo and Andrea (two Simona's friends that came here to visit her for a couple of days) went to the Turner's Cross Stadium, the "home" of the Cork City Football Club, to see for the first time an irish football match. The "Rebels", that's how are called the Corkorians players, faced that evening Cliftonville as 3rd match of the "Setanta Sports Cup".

I didn't know what was exactly this competition: at the beginning I thought it was just a different way to call the "Ireland's cup". I was wrong.
I found out, checking on the web, that the "Setanta Sports Cup" is a club football competition featuring teams from both football associations on the island of Ireland (the FAI League of Ireland from the Republic of Ireland and the Irish League from Northern Ireland). It was inaugurated in 2005, sponsored by Setanta Sports, the irish sports television networks. The competition features four teams from each league with the winners and runners-up of the respective leagues, the winners of the respective major cup competitions, FAI Cup and Irish Cup, and the winners of the respective secondary cup competitions, the eircom League Cup and Irish Football League Cup.

I hope it's quite clear...
Anyway, you can find the full article on wikipedia at the link below:

Setanta Cup

The price of the ticket was 15 euros. After a quick control by a policeman, we went into the stadium.
The capacity is only of 7485 seating, and that evening maybe just half of it was full. Nevertheless, the atmosphere was really very enjoyable: there were lots of children, no pressure on the players and, above all, no barriers between the field and the audience. Indeed I was just 2 meters far from one of the line referees and Cork's coach and I even touched the ball too!!

According to us, the level wasn't so high, specially compared to an italian Serie A match and we didn't see interesting or good players, except one maybe: Dave Mooney, number 39, striker of the Rebels team. He arrived in Cork just three months ago after a very good season last year for Longford Town, ended with 19 goals and the title of topscorer in the 2007 FAI Premier Division. Despite Mooney's heroic season, Longford was relegated to the FAI First Division. English teams are interested on him as well.
I think Trapattoni, new coach of irish national team in a few weeks, should keep an eye on him...

By the way, the match ended 2-0 for the Rebels: the Corkorians scored twice just in the last quarter of the match but, to tell the truth, they easily controlled the opponents keeping them far to the goal area for the whole 90 minutes.

The beautiful things happened at the end of the game. First of all, despite the losing, Cliftonville supporters ( they were really really a lot, considering that they came from Belfast) sang until the final whistle and clapped their players. Second, before to leave the field, Cliftonville players went under Cork's supporters side, clapping each other. Episods difficult to be seen in italian stadiums...

Stand up for Cork City!!

Some useful links just below:

Official Setanta Cup site
Official eircom League of Ireland official site

Tschüs!