Bohemians coast to victory

SOCCER: AIRTRICITY LEAGUE PREMIER DIVISION: UCD 0 Bohemians 2:AFTER THREE weeks without a win, Bohemians coasted to victory last night at Belfield where UCD failed to force a single save of any note from Chris O'Connor even after Owen Heary had left them chasing the game on the stroke of half-time.

Anto Flood eventually put it beyond them and all the students could manage in reply was a near miss by Samir Belhout in the dying minutes far more memorable for the initial footwork than the actual finish.

It’s too early yet to suggest UCD will be in real difficulty this year and, with the top flight set to be enlarged again next season, the numbers are in their favour. However, when they have succeeded in the past at this level it has tended to be based on being hard to beat at Belfield, a reputation they are finding it hard to cement in the early weeks of this campaign.

They’d lost twice at home before last night and perhaps the uncertainty generated by those defeats to Derry and Bray contributed a little to their vulnerability this time out against a side who dominated throughout despite being stripped of a few first-choice players and with a manager still looking poised to make his exit.

UCD never looked entirely overwhelmed by Pat Fenlon’s men but they did generally look second best with their own inability to retain possession when trying to pass their way upfield scarcely helping their cause.

Defensively, the hosts worked hard and they restricted their opponents to a handful of half chances from play over the course of the evening. Set-pieces were a slightly different matter, however, with Martin Russell’s side conceding too many of them from the outset and then failing to deal effectively with a fair amount of what followed.

UCD goalkeeper Ger Barron, to his credit, made the save of the night midway through the first half from Flood whose shot on the turn from 15 yards looked certain to reach the top corner.

The failure of the UCD goalkeeper, though, to clear Killian Brennan’s original corner had contributed to Bohemians’ ability to mount a follow-up attack and the visitors must have sensed the breakthrough would come if they simply kept their heads and maintained the pressure.

Sure enough, their seventh corner of the night, almost a minute into first-half stoppage time, yielded the goal they’d been waiting for with Heary arriving beyond the far post to meet Brennan’s floated ball with a header that clattered off the underside of the crossbar on the way to the back of the net.

After that the result was never seriously put in doubt.

Bohemians continued to enjoy the better of things but their chase for a second only came to an end in the midst of UCD’s best spell of the game. A shot from distance was blocked down and when the resulting throw was cleared upfield Yale Haro mistimed his intervention allowing Flood to win possession and hold off Thomas Boyle before firing home to wrap things up with nine minutes of the game remaining.

UCD:Barron; OConnor, Leahy, Haro, Nangle; Meenan (Marshall, half-time), Corry, Creevy, Langtry (Boyle, half-time); Rusk, Benson (Belhout, 73 mins).

BOHEMIANS:O'Connor; Heary, Burns, Price, O'Brien; Buckley (Forrester, 79 mins) Rossiter, Brennan, Burke (Bayly, 64 mins); Traynor (Joyce, 83 mins), Flood.

Referee: A Kelly (Cork).