Shamrock Rovers 4 Shelbourne 0: THE MUPPET Show theme music at the interval seemed a little unkind but nobody from Shelbourne would claim this was one of their better nights.
There was, perhaps, little they could have done about the way they were handicapped early on, but thereafter Alan Mathews’s men contributed at key moments to their downfall and the champions had only to put away a reasonable proportion of the chances to maintain their strong start to the campaign.
Reduced to 10 men and a goal down after seven minutes, the visitors battled valiantly enough for a spell with Philly Hughes putting in quite a shift up front, where he single-handedly sought to maintain a threat to Oscar Jansson’s goal while all of his team mates sought to protect their own.
That didn’t go entirely to plan, though, and Stephen Hurley will not enjoy the reruns of his rather spectacular own goal half an hour in. After that, it was just a question of how many the home team would beat them by and it could have been worse for Shelbourne.
They might, on the other hand, have been rather better had Derek Tomney not seen their opening mishap as worthy of a straight red card. Dean Delany protested at length as he departed and Shelbourne’s officials seemed to be still arguing about it with the referee at half-time, but it looked a pretty straightforward decision with the goalkeeper taking Billy Dennehy’s legs after the winger had been sent through nicely by Aaron Greene.
There was a delay while Paul Skinner got stripped off for action, during which Gary Twigg stood nonchalantly about with the ball in his hand waiting for a spot kick. The striker looked just as carefree as he took it and pushed his shot towards the bottom right corner. The substitute guessed right and wasn’t too far off making the save but it was well taken and he couldn’t quite keep it out.
Alan Mathews’s men then faced the traditional dilemma in such situations of avoiding further setbacks and trying to rescue something from the situation.
Their ship looked steady enough, indeed, when disaster struck more or less out of the blue. Skinner came well wide of his goal to collect the ball and then give it Gareth Matthews and may have thought he was going to going to get it back when the right back instead played a short pass forward to Hurley.
The goalkeeper stood and watched as the midfielder, without looking up, played what would have been a perfectly respectable ball back to him if only Skinner had been positioned midway between his posts.
There wasn’t, in truth, ever going to be a way back for Shelbourne at that stage but the matter was put completely beyond doubt just before half-time when Ronan Finn let loose with a shot from the edge of the area that, while powerful, didn’t seem unstoppable.
It mattered little, though, for the home side started to really coast in the second half and Shelbourne, after surviving a fairly crazy scramble in which either Finn or Twigg might have scored, fell further behind when an Ian Ryan error allowed Greene to poke home from close range.
At the other end Oscar Jansson made two fine saves when finally called into action.
A little of the gloss was taken off the victory for the visitors when Gary McCabe was sent off after picking up his second booking, but even then they didn’t completely let up and Finn came close to making it five before the final whistle.
SHAMROCK ROVERS: Jansson; Gannon, Sives, Oman (Gartland, half-time), Brennan; Rice, Turner; Dennehy (McCabe, 62), Finn, Greene; Twigg (Kavanagh, 75).
SHELBOURNE: Delany; Matthews, Boyle (Paisley, 81 mins), Ryan, Fitzgerald; McGill (Skinner, 5 ), Hurley, Cronin, C Byrne (Murphy, 62); Kavanagh; Hughes.
Referee: D Tomney (Dublin).
