John Caulfield has revealed Cork City will try to follow Dundalk's blueprint to keep their Europa League dream alive as they prepare for a daunting mission in Genk.
The Leesiders square up to the Belgian giants in the third qualifying round tonight (7pm) after toppling Swedish outfit BK Hacken last week.
If they can cause another shock Cork will march on to the play-off, just one step from the lucrative group stages, but Caulfield admitted it's important to just keep the tie alive against such vaunted opponents.
"When you look at the Dundalk match, it was backs against the wall, they hung in there," said Caulfield of Stephen Kenny's Lilywhites, who lost 1-0 in Belarus against BATE Borisov in their Champions League third-round qualifier on Tuesday night.
"They could have been a couple of goals down. (Goalkeeper Gary) Rogers kept them in the game, they'd a couple of great blocks, nearly frustrated them to the end.
"We could cause them trouble on the counter in certain areas, but you have to have the ball to do that."
"They'll be disappointed with the goal but they're coming back to Dublin with a 1-0 (defeat) which is a fantastic result for them.
"The lads were looking at it and they were saying, 'if we can give a performance like that it would be great' because we certainly know we're going to be up against it, we're going to be on the back foot.
"We could cause them trouble on the counter in certain areas, but you have to have the ball to do that.
"When you look at the bigger picture, you'd think you would (take a 1-0 defeat) based on the size of the club and they type of club they are."
Caulfield will be targeting a precious away goal at the Luminus Arena however.
Their hosts are likely to own the ball this evening, with discipline, concentration and work rate crucial to Cork's hopes of taking anything from the first leg.
The visitors are confident they are capable of causing problems themselves though, and will be aiming to punish Genk on the break.
"When we went to Hacken it was 1-1 and we were coming off the pitch disappointed because we felt we could have won 1-0," Caulfield recalled.
"So you never know. The brilliance about sport is that the underdog always has a chance. I'm optimistic. I'm always positive. We are going out with the game plan of trying to keep it tight, and seeing if we can hit them on the counter.
"We need everyone to play well, and everyone on top form. If two or three fellas aren't at top level you're not going to win. You need everyone to perform well.
"When you go away from home you have to think, 'can we score, how can we do that?', and we've done work on that. We feel there might be opportunities where we could score.
"We're not naive and we know that they're going to dominate the game and have lots of possession and when we get the opportunity to counter we have to be ready to do that."
