The run ends with Genk

Cork City's Europa league run of three rounds ended on Thursday against a superior KRC Genk side. Six weeks of an adventure that will hopefully be used as a platform for even bigger success in the coming years.
The first leg last week in Belgium saw City play superbly well. A lapse in concentration allowed Genk to score but the game was very competitive throughout. On another night City may have left Belgium with an away goal, or two had Seani Maguire managed to convert one of the two guilt edged chances in the second half.

The second leg at home was well over after ten minutes. The lack of an away goal after the first leg was always going to make this task a very difficult one to overcome. In any case when the impressive Leon Bailly's low cross found the unmarked run of Thomas Buffel it was curtains. The former Rangers, Feyenoord and Cercle Brugge man finished superbly. City needed three goals to progress and that wasn't going to happen.
Just before half-time a corner from Alejandro Pozuelo found the unmarked Sébastien Dewaest and his powerful header beat McNulty. 2-0 to the Belgians and City now needed four to progress, game over.

The fear was that the second half was going to be rout but credit to the City players that they did not let that happen. In fact it was a pretty good second half display. Steven Beattie was shifted to right back, Gearoid Morrisey was sacrificed at half-time and City went at Genk for the second half, for pride more than anything else.
A lovely free-kick was curled into the box just after the hour mark, Alan Bennett rose highest to plant his header past Marco Bizot and the cheer from the stand was like we had scored the winner. 2-1 three more to progress. It was a tiny glimmer but realistically we already knew it was curtains. City pushed for more but a word on Genk was they managed the game superbly. A joy to watch at times it was a reminder of the standard that is needed to progress at this stage of the competition.

In stoppage time City gave away a blatant penalty and the chance for Genk to put a bit of gloss on the tie. Neeskens Kebano stepped up and crashed his penalty off the crossbar in the last kick of the tie and City's involvement in this season's Europa league.

The Genk away support was superb as well and were applauded by their players at the full time whistle. About 200-300 of them made the trip over and they certainly made themselves heard and seen with some pyro at the start of the game.

As it turned out the draw for the play-off round pitted Genk with a trip to Lokomotiva Zagreb for a shot at the group stage. Had City made it to the play-offs it was one of the Greek trio of Olympiacos, PAOK and Panathinaikos that I would've wanted.
In any case till next year Europe, but do kind of wish Budućnost had converted a couple of those penalties in the last round.