Cullen hoping home crowd will pull her through in Dublin

IRISH number one Mary Cullen is hoping to use the home crowd to her advantage at the European Cross Country Championships in Dublin and go one better than last year's fourth-place.

COMEBACK TRAIL: Ireland's Mary Cullen, who struck bronze at the European Indoors in March, looks to continue her comeback from skull surgery with a medal in Dublin (Getty Images)

The27-year old finished just two seconds off the podium in Brussels 12 months ago but has been through much tougher battles since then after being told she needed skull surgery on a lump growing towards her brain tissue.

To rub salt into the wound, a stress fracture in her hip ruled the Irish runner out of July's World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

But the Irish runner has bounced back to competition, and after an impressive fourth place in Burgos in November, Cullen was a runaway winner at the Irish National Championships three weeks ago.

 But with the likes of last year's silver and bronze medallists, Portugal's Jessica Augusto and Inês Monteiro and Ukraine's 2006 champion Tetyana Holovchenko also lining up in Dublin, Cullen admits she may need the crowd's support to give her that extra edge.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush - I want to win an individual medal in Dublin this weekend," said Cullen, who struck 3,000m bronze at March's European Indoor Championships in Turin.

"It would be great to win a team medal as well but my main aim is to focus on reaching that podium.

"The support from the crowd will be hugely important for me and all the other Irish athletes so it's very much a case of the bigger the better.

"It's always a great fun event to come and watch so hopefully there'll be lots of young people there experiencing the best Irish and European runners in action."

The senior women's race gets underway at 13:15 on Sunday.