Two wins from two in pre-season friendlies and Ian Morris can be relatively content with the work that's gone in to date - but he won't yet be counting his chickens.
Two goals from Cian Kavanagh were enough to hold Stephen O' Donnells Dundalk at bay in the RSC for the first home game of the season. 562 were in attendance for the game; a positive sign and a reassurance that the fans are excited about the upcoming first division campaign.
While they may not have kept a clean sheet - with David McMillan rolling the ball passed Brian Murphy to the back of the Waterford net, it was a dominant display from the Blues as they continue their preparations for the start of competitive games next month. The manager has now had four games (two behind closed doors) to get a look at his squad, with plenty of squad rotation in all those outings. He's happy to see the work on the training ground translate into on-field performances.
"Yeah, that's the key for us. We've seen an awful lot of good things today. A lot of lads were really good all over the pitch. Still an awful lot we have to improve on and that will come. We still have three weeks until the start of the season. We got a couple of new boys that have come in the door that would have missed patches to the start of preseason. Just getting everyone up to tune and getting everyone firing for competition for places - that's the big thing we're looking for."
Cian Kavanagh was instrumental in the efforts of the Blues. The striker opened the scoring on 31 minutes when he dispossessed Jack Kavanagh before charging into the area and firing past Peter Cherrie. He doubled his tally eight minutes later when he muscled the defender off the ball, swiveled, and slotted the ball home.
Morris told WLR Sport that he's happy to see Kavanagh performing to such a standard, especially with the season in such a fledgling stage.
"He's a really good player Cian. He's worked really hard with us for four weeks, he's actually got his reward as well - he's away with Ireland U19's on Tuesday. So that's an individual accolade that he's worked hard to get. But, he's got to keep that hard work rate to get in this team because you can see what we have in the building and all over the pitch. I keep saying to the players that you have to be at that tempo and your attitude and application has to be right otherwise someone else is gonna be knocking on the door."
The goals are good, but Morris has stressed that he wants his team to be defensively sound going forward, and the goal conceded to O' Donnell's is something that he doesn't want to see happening going forward.
"We want to be exciting, we want to score lots of goals, we want to keep clean sheets. Disappointed today not to keep a clean sheet, I thought we could have done better with the goal, but that's just another thing we need to improve on. As the season goes on, we should improve on that, and really put a string and clean sheets together. You can see the attacking options we have going forward. That will be exciting. They'll get bums off seats and will hopefully put teams away with good scoring goals."
Next up for the Blues will be the trip to play Treaty United in the Munster Cup for their first competitive game of the season. The competition wasn't played last season due to the covid-19 pandemic.
The club have won the competition 15 times (2nd most wins ever - behind Cork City) and will be hoping that it can provide the first silveverware since their First Division success in 2017.
