O'Leary relishing Cork City encounter

Twenty-two year old Cork born midfielder David O’Leary is relishing Friday night’s clash against his hometown club, Cork City.

The former College Corinthians midfielder left the Leesiders to pursue first team football at Eamonn Deacy Park.

O’Leary told www.galwayunitedfc.ie that he feels United are starting to fulfil some of the promise they showed earlier in the season and that they’re starting to turn good performances into results.

“I think we’ve turned a corner in recent weeks,” O’Leary said.

“Things weren’t going right for us, decisions weren’t going our way in games, but we seem to have rectified that a bit with some good results home and away in the league and cups.

“We’ve bounced off those two wins against Bohemians and we’re high in confidence. We feel that we can challenge anyone at Eamonn Deacy Park.”

Last week, O’Leary was introduced from the bench against North End in Galway United’s narrow FAI Cup win against the Wexford side. O’Leary concedes that the home sides performance on the night fell way short of expectation.

“I can’t put my finger on it, maybe it was the amount of games that we played. The squad has been a bit depleted in the last few weeks due to injuries.

“Maybe tiredness got to us a bit and was a factor, our performance was a bit disappointing against North End. To be fair, they were a strong junior side and they put it up to us.

“If you look back at the game, I didn’t think Connor Gleeson was overly troubled by them. All the same, we should be winning those types of games by bigger margins and we know that the performance wasn’t up to the level that we demand of ourselves as players.”

On Friday night, Cork City visit Eamonn Deacy Park for the first time this season and O’Leary is adamant a resurgent United team can pick up a result against John Caulfield’s side.

“Cork City are a good team, they’ll be there or thereabouts come the end of the season,” the midfieder said.

“We played them at Turners Cross earlier in the year, we don’t fear them at all but we respect them because they’re a good team. On the night, it was two set plays that cost us.

“We had chances of our own, Gary Shanahan and Jake Keegan went close but it wasn’t to be, that’s football. If we can rectify the mistakes we made in that game, I think we’ve a good chance of picking up a positive result against Cork City.”

After spending a number of seasons with Limerick, O’Leary moved home to Cork in 2014 but he found first-team opportunities scarce at Turners Cross.

“It’s just another game for me, it will be nice to meet up with a few familiar faces from last season though.

“I moved up to Galway to play more because I didn’t play as much as I would’ve liked last year. Fortunately for me, Tommy Dunne has shown some faith in me and given me the chance to play more this year.

“I think my performances have been better, but obviously there’s a lot of room for improvement and hopefully we can get back on track against Cork City on Friday night,” O’Leary concluded.

Galway United v Cork City, Friday, June 5th, Eamonn Deacy Park. Kick-off: 7.45pm.