UEFA Cup qualifying Cork City 0 FK Ekranas 1 (Cork City win 2-1 on Aggregate) The balance between prudence and penny-pinching is sometimes a hard one to strike for hard-pressed clubs in European football.

And as Ekranas make the long and, it seems, unnecessarily arduous journey back to Lithuania this morning they may wonder what might have been had they been a little bit more extravagant with their preparations for last night's Uefa Cup first qualifying round tie at Turner's Cross.

Virginijus Liubsys and his squad travelled to Ireland knowing they needed to score twice even to push the tie into extra-time but having hit the 50 mark in their 21st league game back home over the weekend the target might not, on paper at least, have seemed entirely out of the question.

Clearly, though, the visitors were not overly optimistic as their journey on a military aircraft took seven and a half hours on Wednesday, leaving the squad with time for just a brief run out at the match venue yesterday morning. Whether better preparations would have enabled them to turn the tie around we will never know. After seeing his side fall behind on the hour last night Damien Richardson admitted the closing stages of a slightly scrappy and generally disappointing tie provided a few nervous moments in the home side's dugout.

"The fact is I never expected them to score while I thought we would, but it was after the goal went in that I was particularly pleased with what I saw from my players," he said. "The defence and midfield worked their socks off and we hung in there until the very end.

"I'd have to admit we didn't play well but professional football is often about what you can achieve when you're not playing well and after a wonderful performance out there two weeks ago we did enough tonight to deserve our place in the next round."

There must still have been moments, though, when Richardson feared it would be yet another one of those nights for an Eircom League side in Ireland.

Mantas Savenas and Vitalijus Kavaliauskas are, between them, responsible for almost half Ekranas's tally in their home league and the pair each had their moments early on as City took a while to find their stride.

The City back four had a slightly chaotic look about it through the opening exchanges and Mark McNulty must have been as relieved as his manager to see Savenas fire well over from inside the area after the visitors were allowed to work the ball into the box almost unchallenged.

The home team's faltering start continued as Valerijus Mizigurskis curled a shot from the edge of the area just over the angle of the woodwork and Richardson's dismay in the City dugout was obvious.

Fortunately for Cork, their visitors were no better at retaining possession and as the home side began to get on top of things in midfield, where Greg O'Halloran was again impressive, there was plenty for them to work with as they sought to pressure the Lithuanians' three-man defence.

From just behind John O'Flynn in attack, George O'Callaghan was a major cause of trouble for the visitors but the 25-year-old couldn't engineer the breakthrough and a booking 24 minutes in for diving just inside the area will keep him out of City's first game in the next round.

Around him, there were glimpses of the form that has enabled the southerners to establish a commanding lead in the Eircom League this season, but no more than that. A handful of half chances were fluffed before Liam Kearney missed the target from 12 yards with just the goalkeeper to beat after O'Callaghan and Roy O'Donovan combined to carve open their opposition's defence.

A goal for the Irish side then would more or less have settled things but instead it was the Lithuanians who made the breakthrough. Savenas floated in a free for Arunas Klimavicius whose header came off the foot of the right post and was adjudged to have crept just over the line before McNulty could retrieve it.

The 30 minutes that followed, however impressed Richardson might have been by the resilience displayed, were not the most impressive of City's season to date and the tie might well have been levelled on a couple of occasions late on with McNulty getting out well to block down a shot from Povilas Luksys who was clean through. Joe Gamble produced a brilliantly-timed lunging intervention to prevent Kavaliaskas from getting his shot away late on.

To the considerable relief of the large crowd, though, the locals did hang on and will hope they can produce something somewhat closer to their best against the Scandinavian or Scottish opposition they are most likely to be paired with in this morning's draw for the competition's second qualifying round.

CORK CITY: McNulty; Horgan, Bennett, Murray, Murphy; O'Donovan (O'Brien, 88 mins), Gamble, O'Halloran, Kearney (Woods, 93 mins); O'Callaghan; O'Flynn.

EKRANAS: Skrupskis; Skroblas, Klimavicius, Paulauskas; Saulenas (Mykolaitis, 78 mins), Tomkevicius, Gardzijauskas, Savenas, Mizigurskis (Galkevicius, 58 mins); Kavaliauskas, Luksys.

Referee: G Woldhaber (Switzerland)