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"There was a lot of rubbish said and certain things which were totally lies"

For the first time since 2005, Cork City had brought a League of Ireland title back home. But the...



"There was a lot of rubbis...
Soccer

"There was a lot of rubbish said and certain things which were totally lies"

For the first time since 2005, Cork City had brought a League of Ireland title back home.

But they also made added history on Sunday when they claimed the first double in the club's history by beating Dundalk on penalties to win the FAI Cup for the second year in a row.

The success is a shining beacon to what manager John Caulfield has been building at Turner's Cross and he joined Joe and Kevin to reflect on the double achievement and what follows next for the club. 

"There was a lot of rubbish said and certain things which were totally lies"

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"On the other side of it, it was the fact that also that we had all the Seanie Maguires and Kevin O'Connors who'd left during the season and these guys got to the cup final since the lads had left," said Caulfield.

"I think it was significant that the boys could actually win the double and win the cup on their own because a lot of the season while Seanie was fantastic for us, when he left, we obviously struggled for a while but I think there was a sense among the team that they'd won the cup without Seanie and I think there was extra joy in that as well." 

With Cork City having built up a huge lead in the league after a blistering start to the campaign, coupled with the departures of Maguire and O'Connor to Preston North End, Caulfield was mindful of resetting the mindset and focus to what it had been at its peak in the first months of the season. 

There were other distractions filtered through the prism of the media that also needed to be blocked out as Caulfield explained. 

Cork City Manager John Caulfield celebrates with former players Kevin O'Connor and Sean Maguire ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne

While he feels there is no bias against Cork both within and outside the context of the increasingly heated rivalry with Dundalk, the manager did add: "What I wanted to make sure during the week was that our guys weren't side-tracked by anything that was said or anything like that and there was a lot of rubbish said and certain things that were said which were totally lies.

"Why would you leak that our player has signed for the other team four days before the cup final? Stuff like that.

"The most important thing for me with the players was to ignore everything and get all their concentration ready for the game." 

One of the stories that Caulfield was unhappy about concerned an accusation that his goalkeeper Mark McNulty had taunted Dundalk captain Stephen O'Donnell down the phone after last season's cup final. The Cork City manager dismissed that claim and said it "100% didn't happen", adding that, "Stephen O'Donnell will verify that. He'll confirm that because he's a gentleman". 

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