Kenny Shiels believes that tonight’s televised game between Derry City and Cork City will show teams with very contrasting ideas of how to win football games.

The Candy Stripes are presented with the significant challenge of becoming the first team in the Premier Division this season to take points off the league leaders, to prevent the Leesiders from opening up a 12 point gap between the two clubs.

Cork have hardly put a foot wrong this term while City slipped up for the first time against Bray Wanderers last week. And Shiels, who knows the odds are against his team at Turner’s Cross, believes his players will have to raise their game again if they are to frustrate the hosts.

“They players are doing well but we will have to match up to Cork,” he told the Derry News. “We will have to be brave and take the ball. If it comes to football we’ll do well because the quality is in their play. We just have to be stronger and more physical.

“Cork are a very percentage team who win the second balls; they have won all their games by winning the second balls. It’s a wee bit old-fashioned or agricultural or whatever you want to call it. They are good at what they do. It will be a hard game. They are very direct in how they play. They have great physical presence.”

City came within minutes of a memorable league win at Turner’s Cross last season, but two late goals turned the game against them before a post-match altercation between Shiels and a member of the Cork coaching staff took the focus off the game.

The challenge for City this time around is no different; frustrating the Cork players and Cork fans and withstanding what is sure to be some immense pressure late on. Cork’s forceful play has certainly earned them results again this season, but Shiels believes that his team play the better football.

“The first priority is to entertain. It’s the entertainment business,” he stated. “ If everybody adopted that attitude it would be a better game. What we have brought to the league in my opinion is good for the league. It’s not win at all costs for us. It’s about performing in a way in which will please the fans and helps us to entertain the folk in Derry, and also to get wins. We play with that freedom, we don’t just hump it up; we’ll see two very different styles on Friday night.”

The game will see Conor McCormack come up against his former team mates for the first time. The midfielder was one of the most important players in the City squad last year, but he opted to take up a contract offer with the Leesiders rather than remain at the Brandywell. It was the second season running that Cork snapped up an out of contract player from the Brandywell, prompting Shiels to take action.

“They have taken our two best players in the last two years and they can’t keep on doing that,” he insisted. “That’s why I have ring-fenced our best young players and put them on two and three years contracts so they can’t come in and steal them.

“We have suffered from that since I have come in. We have to ring fence the players so if clubs want them they have to buy them. We have to protect the players against that and that’s what I’ve been doing.”

City will be without Rory Patterson, with the striker set to spend the next few months on the sidelines due to a fractured bone in his ankle. Also missing from the squad will be youngster Rory Holden, who is suffering from a groin strain.

One player who could still make the game is goalkeeper and captain Gerard Doherty, who suffered a thigh injury during the first half of last week’s game against Bray Wanderers. The City goalkeeper collided with a post whilst trying to save Gary McCabe’s free kick and had to be substituted at half time.

If Doherty does not make it, reserve goalkeeper Mark McElhinney, only 18 years old, will travel south with the squad, while Etic Grimes would be in line for his first start for Derry, against his former club.

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