Prague the gateway to Uefa glory for Cork

On Soccer: After spending another weekend in the shadow of the county's hurlers, Cork City's players head for Prague this morning intent on stealing back just a little of the limelight. By the standards of Sunday's events at Croke Park, their meeting with Slavia Prague will be rather low key but another good away performance would leave Damien Richardson's men on the verge of a breakthrough that just might be as well remembered in years to come as a 30th All-Ireland hurling title.

City will travel this morning without Richardson who is well but still undergoing tests in a Cork hospital after severe tightness of breath late last week led to the suspicion he had a clot in one of his lungs. Travel, in the circumstances, is out of the question but work not so and with Thursday night's game being shown on RTÉ, the manager is set to spend the night with a remote control in one hand and a phone in the other.

In Prague, Dave Hill will be relaying the instructions and he will be helped on the night by veterans of City's last trip to the Czech capital, Phil Harrington, Pat Morley and Declan Daly, all of whom are travelling for the game.

The Uefa Cup's many changes in format make City's achievements in the competition hard to gauge properly. Even if they were to beat Slavia Prague over two games they would only be in the last 40 of the competition which would not in itself break new ground for an Irish club.

In modern times, however, it has become a great deal tougher to compete in and if City could become the first Irish club to reach the group stage of a European competition it would represent, by quite some distance, the most significant step forward by an Irish outfit.

Needless to say, it won't be easy. City travelled to Prague to play the same opponents 11 years ago when they lost the first leg 2-0 before being overrun back at home by twice that margin. It was a decent Cork side with the likes of Daly, Morley, John Caulfield, Tommy Gaynor and Liam Murphy all starting both legs and one member of the current squad, Billy Woods, coming on in both games. Slavia, as it turned out, were that bit better with Patrick Berger and Vladimir Smicer among the future internationals at a club that was to win the league for the first time in almost half a century and beat both Lyon and AS Roma on the way to the semi-finals of the Uefa Cup the following season.

Since then they have reacquainted themselves with the reality of being the country's second club as Sparta have gone on to become Champions League regulars. Slavia have benefited from their neighbours' success as they gained a second spot in the tournament's preliminary rounds but they have yet to capitalise on the European opportunities that have come their way. They have repeatedly lost out - as they did this season to Anderlecht - at the third qualifying round stage of the more lucrative competition.

Over the past few seasons they have racked up a great deal of European experience while performing solidly at home. They were again second in the league last year, which isn't too bad for a club whose leading players are always available for the right price. One fairly recent departure was goalkeeper Radek Cerny who left for Spurs (also part-owned by the ENIC group) while perhaps a greater blow was the loss during the close season of vastly experienced midfielder Radek Bejbl to Rapid Vienna.

Coach Karel Jarolim has done well in the circumstances but he is working with a young squad which, rather remarkably, contains no senior internationals and just two players who have represented their country at under-21 level.

The club have not started the season well and lie 12th in the table with just five points from five games despite not having met any of the title favourites yet. Of perhaps most concern for the locals, they have yet to keep a clean sheet with nine goals conceded to date.

Anderlecht also managed a couple in each leg against them but City would surely settle for one and the prospect of having something to sit on again back at Turner's Cross. To date they have taken the upper hand against each of their opponents in the first leg and with their home form still slightly unreliable, they will hope to do the same again this time around.

Quite what happens if City do get through remains to be seen. Playing group matches at Turner's Cross with its meagre 5,500 capacity for European games would seem like a major opportunity lost but the club believes there are no serious alternatives locally while relocating to Lansdowne Road would surely be unthinkable, no matter how attractive the opposition.

The problem may not arise. Slavia will start as favourites and if they rediscover last season's best form on Thursday night then they should be capable of laying the groundwork for progression. As Brian Lennox observed yesterday, however, this is a young City side who have got used to winning and have developed a considerable distaste for losing.

European football presents a very different set of challenges but another 6-0 aggregate defeat certainly seems to be out of the question. Just how far Cork have come, we shall see.