In a world where many believe you should seek to under-promise then over-deliver, Karl Sheppard and Cork City might have brought a little bit of trouble on themselves.
The club head into Sunday’s FAI Cup final anxious to deliver a trophy that would help to meet the expectations generated by last season’s title challenge while the Dubliner hopes to edge at least a little bit closer to the 20-goal minimum target he set himself before this campaign began.
Extenuating circumstances
Both will cite extenuating circumstances for coming up a little short so far this season. Manager John Caulfield has suggested that his City side are better now when at their best than they were last year but that they have drifted in the league since it became clear they could not catch Dundalk who, the unfortunate truth is, have simply been exceptional. As for Sheppard, he can point to what is a highly respectable strike rate for someone played out wide rather than up front.
“It’s been quite a strange season,” the 24-year-old says. “I think a lot of people out there would be delighted to have made it to a cup final and had a solid season in the league but we were aiming for more, to be honest. We wanted to win the league and we want to go and win the cup now.”
On the personal front, the former Galway United and Shamrock Rovers star is unperturbed by having his own pre-season targets thrown back at him and unconcerned, he insists, about the primary reason he failed to meet them.
“Yeah, at the start of the season I thought I was going to be playing up front. Since then, I’ve sort of been converted to a left winger but I’d still look at the season as a successful one. I certainly will if I can top it off with a winner’s medal and a trophy. For me it’s one that I want to build on going into next year.
“I’m really enjoying it to be honest,” he says of the positional switch. “I’ll pretty much play anywhere that the manager asks me to. I’ll play right back, left back and I’m enjoying playing on the left wing. It took me a while to get used to it but I have now I think and I’m enjoying my football. I’ve scored 13 and if I could get a goal now in the final and we could win the game then that would have to go down as a successful season for me.”
Dundalk will start Sunday’s game as firm favourites with the manner of their title success and City’s general form over the run in both appearing to suggest they can complete a second ever double for the club but Cork’s draw at Oriel last time they visited and their comeback a couple of weeks ago in Turner’s Cross gives some idea of the determination amongst Caulfield’s men not to be made look second best again by their rivals.
Richie Towell was somewhat scathing recently about City's record against the champions but Sheppard played a key part in turning the league clash at the Cross completely around. That, he says, is the way Cork intend to play at the Aviva Stadium this Sunday.
“Dundalk are a very good team, we’ve played them enough times to know that and we’re not going to starting claiming that they’re not. But that game might have opened up their eyes to our qualities.
“We gave them a bit too much respect over the first 20 minutes of it but then we started to cause them a lot of problems. Once we got in amongst them we showed them what we can do and we showed our fans what we can do.
“They have good players but if you let players have time on the ball then they all start to look great . . . it won’t be like that this time. If Dundalk want to win this cup then they’re going to have earn it because they won’t be getting it as easy as the first 20 against us that time.
Raise the bar
“We know we can hurt them when we play the way Cork City do, when we’re at our best then we have reason to be confident and if we have one of those days then I think that it’ll be us lifting the cup.”
That, he admits, will only help to raise the bar for next season amongst fans who don’t settle for second best. It suits him just fine, Sheppard says, with the former under-21 international signing up not so long ago for another two years.
“They expect that best and when we haven’t delivered at times over the last while, they haven’t been shy about letting us know. We fell into a bit of a lull because we were in the cup, it’s not hard for teams to do in those circumstances but John (Caulfield) made it clear that we needed to improve if we wanted to win the final, that we couldn’t just expect to turn it on on the day. It was pretty stern stuff but I think we’ve seen the improvement in some of our recent games.
“It’s only right that the expectations are kept high, that’s what you want as a player. And as a team. Now we need to deliver in the final.”
