Cork City

Ground: Turner´s Cross Stadium

Visits: 1

Date: 18th July 2014

Match: Cork City - UCD 2-1 (Premier Division)

Attendance: 2 616

Matches in the Irish Premier Division are mostly played on Friday evenings. Three teams playing the Europa League qualifiers meant I only had two fixtures to choose from this Friday evening though. In the end I decided to visit Cork City vs UCD at Turner´s Cross Stadium. Cork is situated in southern Ireland and having stayed the night in Belfast I had two train journeys looking forward to. At 08.00 my first train of the day left Belfast Central station. Two hours later I was at Dublin Connolly station. Since trains to Cork depart from the other major train station in Dublin (Heuston) I had to use the LUAS tram in order to get to Heuston station. At 12.00 my second train of the day then left Dublin Heuston and by 14.35 I had reached my destination, the city of Cork. Wikipedia: Cork is the second largest city in the state and the third most populous on the island of Ireland. The city is built on the River Lee which divides into two channels at the western end of the city. The city centre is located on the island created by the channels. At the eastern end of the city centre where the channels re-converge, quays and docks along the river banks lead to Lough Mahon and Cork Harbour, which is one of the world's largest natural harbours. The city's cognomen of "the rebel city" originates in its support for the Yorkist cause during the English War of the Roses. Corkonians often refer to the city as "the real capital" in reference to the city's role as the centre of anti-treaty forces during the Irish Civil War. My hotel (B&B is probably a better description) was only a 3-minute walk from the train station. Being a bit tired I stayed in my room for a few hours before heading towards the city centre to have something to eat and drink. Kick-off was at 20.05 and around 18.45 I was outside Turner´s Cross Stadium, the home of Cork City.

Turner´s Cross Stadium is nicely tucked in with the neighbouring houses. The ground has four separate stands and the capacity is around 7 500. It was unreserved seating which meant I had three stands to choose from. If you are a groundhopper wanting to take pictures of all the stands this was of course good news. I decided to sit in the top row (row 6) of the North Stand. Cork City were joint leaders of the league and looking in the match programme I noticed they have decent attendances for their home matches. The best attendance this year is 5 600 (vs Shamrock Rovers) and I was hoping for a good attendance for this match as well. UCD brought 1 fan to this match and in total 2 600 were inside Turner´s Cross Stadium. Surprisingly it was UCD who scored the first goal of the match, 0-1 in the 6th minute. Cork then dominated for the reminder of the match. The equalizer came from the penalty spot and UCD had a player sent off in this incident as well, 1-1 at half-time. This match could only have one winner and in the 75th minute Cork scored the well-deserved winner. The home fans created a decent atmosphere throughout the match and I enjoyed my visit to Turner´s Cross Stadium. After the match I decided to walk back to my B&B. It was mostly downhill and in the warm (for Ireland!) evening it was quite a relaxing end to my day.

cork