Ruaidhri Higgins has banned all talk of a Derry City double, insisting it is the furthest thing from his mind.
The Candystripes head to Cork City aiming for a place in the quarter-finals of the FAI Cup, while also still being firmly in the Premier Division title race, two points behind Shelbourne with just nine games to go.
But Higgins scoffed at the suggestion of the word ‘double’, with the City manager not even looking beyond Friday’s game.
“It hasn’t even come into my thinking,” he said. “I’m not even joking. Cork is all that’s in my head and that’s the truth. It’s nonsense talk. We have nine games left in the League and hopefully four games left in the Cup. If we have a chance going into the last game and we’re in the Cup Final, that’s probably more of a discussion then.”
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Higgins believes Derry will face a Premier Division standard team in runaway First Division leaders Cork, who are certain to clinch the title in the coming weeks given that they sit 15 points ahead of nearest challengers Athlone.
“They are a Premier Division team, playing in the First Division,” he stated. “They’ve obviously signed really well and they’ve had a really good season. They’ll be playing in the Premier Division again next year, and rightly so, they’re too big of a club to be where they are, and I think for me they’re one of the biggest clubs in Ireland and we’ll treat them with the respect they deserve.”
City defeated Cork 2-0 at the Brandywell at this stage of the competition on their way to winning the Cup two years ago, but this will be their first visit to Turners Cross in the tournament since 2015, when a 3-0 defeat proved to be Peter Hutton’s last game in charge as a manager.
The importance of the FAI Cup will never be lost on Higgins, who added: “(The 2022 Final) was incredible. I said it previously, it has built the next generation of supporters. You see the interest in the young people around the town. It’s amazing. And I do believe that the Cup Final 20 months ago or whatever it was had a huge, huge impact on the future of the club and its supporters.”