Standing outside the visitors' dressing-room at Dalymount Park last Sunday, Dave Barry's frustration about his Cork City team's latest setback in the league was clearly evident. Cork, first to score and later level at 2-2, lost in Barry's opinion because of a lack of experience.

Nobody's conceding anything quite yet, but then nobody needs to exactly spell it out. A run of six draws and last Sunday's defeat leaves Barry shaking his head and expressing the hope that it's all part of a learning process that will bear fruit in the days ahead.

He knows, of course, that the source of his problems last week is also his greatest cause for long-term optimism. Over the past couple of years, City have brought through some of the National League's most promising young players and even if they showed on Sunday that they have yet to attain their manager's guile, the signs are that the club possesses a handful of the next decade's biggest stars in the game.

Noel Mooney, John Cotter, Brian Barry Murphy and Noel Hartigan have nailed down claims to regular first-team slots over the past year or so, while two 22 year-olds have emerged as the outstanding attacking forces in midfield. On weekdays both men drive vans for a local office supplies company. Come the weekend, though, it's deliveries of an altogether different kind that occupy the minds of the team's wide men, Ollie Cahill and Colin O'Brien.

While Clonmel-born Cahill is another one of those players who have returned home after a spell in England, O'Brien's emergence as the club's top scorer this season is a dream come true for a local player who opted for soccer when forced to choose between it and an equally-promising career with the county's Gaelic football team.

An All-Ireland winner at minor and under-21 levels, the strain of combining both codes eventually became too much for the youngster whose childhood devotion to the City went a long way towards making his decision for him.

"Sure I was a Shed-y myself," he laughs, "I started going to Flower Lodge when I was 10 or 11, going to see Dave Barry and Liam Murphy playing for City, and it was always an ambition to play for the club.

"After I signed I was still playing Gaelic as well, but it was impossible to keep combining the two of them, there was always training the same night, and that sort of thing, and when it came time to make a decision I was happy to go with City."

His dedication is such that last year he was, for a while, also the club's commercial manager, a situation he opted to call a halt to himself on the grounds that he had become too involved with City's fortunes.

By then, however, he was well established in the first-team squad. Having made his City debut against UCD when he was 18, a subsequent flirtation by Barry with a three-man defence provided O'Brien with the opportunity he needed to show off his attacking talents.

The role was not dissimilar to that he had grown used to with Bishopstown and Cork in Gaelic football, where he had played both as a wing back and a wing forward. His ability to read the game from out wide stood him in good stead and when the system was dropped in favour of the more conventional 44-2, Barry gave him a run on the right hand side of midfield, from where he has scored seven goals in the league this season.

It's a role he clearly enjoys. "Back in June he (Barry) was saying to us to get in to the box whenever we could because if we can get in there and there's a decent ball coming in from the other side, then we're always in with a chance of scoring.

"That's been great for me. I wouldn't have seen myself as a big goalscorer exactly, but the chance to get in there and try to cause problems has been great. We've been getting goals from everywhere, right across the midfield, the centre halves - it's a bit like Derry were last year."

Cork, though, have also taken to conceding goals from just about everywhere too. It's a complete transformation from last year when they had the tightest defence in the top flight, but found it desperately difficult to find the net themselves.

Their recent run in the league has had the effect of making Sunday's game against Derry all the more important. "This week has been good. On Tuesday we had a good talk about what's been going wrong in the last few games, a lot of people got things out of their system, and we're looking forward to this game now, we're a lot more confident."

Interest in the city is, he says, incredible and if Derry come and play the way you'd expect them to - "not trying to shut it down and push it to a replay" - then there is every chance that another near-capacity crowd at Turner's Cross will be in for a treat.

Whatever happens in this game, and even if the league has slipped out of City's reach (which he refuses to concede), O'Brien has little doubt about his club's long-term prospects. "There's definitely a successful team here. Maybe not this year, but over the next two or three years we know we have the ability to win things," he says.

Few doubt it. Dave Barry knows it to be true, too, and it is that belief that has been the source of his frustration in recent months. The time has come to put some of the hard lessons learned to very good use.