National League Title race: Midway through the week leading up to the season's biggest game and it's literally business as usual for Cork City midfielder Joe Gamble. With training out of the way yesterday, the 23-year-old passes the afternoon fielding questions about Friday's title decider against Derry City while overseeing proceedings at Indigo, the clothes shop he co-owns with team-mate Neale Fenn.

Gamble, to be fair, is filling in for his manager, Damian Richardson, as he talks about the game, but both he and Fenn like to keep an eye on a venture that could hardly be said to have suffered from their exploits for Cork City this year.

"It's great," he says cheerfully, "but then Cork is a sport-mad place, Dublin is nowhere near it, and what the team has been doing this year has caused a real buzz around the place. They'll talk about a game like this for weeks and it's great to be involved. Everywhere you go there are kids wandering around in City jerseys and if you're in town people are stopping you, saluting you and wanting to talk about how things are going."

How things are going is, in a word, well, but Gamble seems less than surprised by the scale of the team's achievements over the past eight months. Under Pat Dolan a year ago the team mounted a late charge on Shelbourne's commanding lead at the top of the Premier Division and ended up breathing down the necks of the champions. This year, they have led from the front having collectively decided, says the former under-21 international, that they need not settle for second best.

"We didn't really feel that we missed out last year because, to be fair, we were playing catch-up the whole time and we weren't really in contention until those last few weeks after we'd put together a great run of results. But afterwards I think we sort of sat down and said, 'we're the best team in the league, we should be able to win it'. There was a confidence there, in the fact that we're a good team and a very young team that can get better over the next few years and what we're looking to do is to prove that to people."

The last few weeks, he admits, have been frustrating with a couple of slip-ups ultimately costing them the league leadership and leaving Derry in the position of only needing a draw at Turner's Cross. "We've had a few difficult games, maybe because a couple of the teams that we came up against had a bit more to play for than the ones Derry played. But we've done okay and I wouldn't call the fact that a draw would do Derry a blow.

"The way we look at it we need the win and we feel we're fully capable of getting it but we need to play well, better than we did against Shelbourne because some of our decision making and composure around the box let us down at Tolka Park. We have to improve in that department but everyone believes that we will."

The absence of John O'Flynn from the City attack was once again a factor in Friday's performance and Gamble admits the loss to a groin injury of the striker, who is highly unlikely to start this week, has made life that bit more difficult.

The visitors have a problem or two themselves, he notes, with Barry Molloy's suspension of particular interest. "They're a good side and we know them well at this stage. They like to get the ball to (Gary) Beckett quickly and then work off him and they have lads like Ciarán Martyn who are good getting forward from midfield. Barry scored a cracking goal in their 3-1 win up there and I think he's played well in all of the games but they've got other good players, you can't worry about it."

On home soil and with a sell-out crowd cheering them on there still seems, a good deal of confidence but Gamble admits City will have to produce something near their best if they are to triumph. "The night of the 5-1 win up in Belfield we were just on fire, everyone clicked and nobody in the league could have lived with us that night.

"Unfortunately," he says, "you can't just turn performances like that on but we know what we have to do. Everybody down here is expecting a big day out and we'll be looking to make sure they're not disappointed."