Late penalty save offers Fenlon some relief from stress test

AIRTRICITY LEAGUE PREMIER DIVISION: St Patrick's Ath 0 Bohemians 0:IT REMAINS to be seen whether Pat Fenlon will come through the particular stress test that the problems at Bohemians have been subjecting him to of late but last night's game at Richmond Park can't have done too much for his will to stick round.

By the end, as it happened, it could have been worse. His side didn’t miss an injury time penalty that would have secured the additional two points.

And referee Richie Winter did realise his error and let Ger O’Brien stay on the pitch after initially showing him what he thought was a second yellow card for the challenge on Shane McFaul that led to a spot kick for the hosts. Still, this was by no means a great night at the office for the Dalymount Park outfit.

For the home side, the Richmond roller-coaster continues. A late collapse against Bray was followed by a stirring fightback at home to Dundalk. This time the talking point for the fans as they headed for home will have been the team’s poor finishing in general and, in particular, the penalty that Paul Crowley failed to put past Barry Murphy as the game moved into added time.

Neither side started well, to be fair, but the visitors were especially disappointing, struggling to retain possession and repeatedly falling back on long balls upfield towards Anto Flood to relieve the pressure on their back four.

The former Shelbourne striker did his best to make something of whatever possession came his way and did come close to picking out Robert Bayly with a fine cross 15 minutes in but for the most part the locals, overseen by John Gill for the night, found winning the ball back straightforward enough even if doing something positive with it proved a little a bit trickier.

They did manage a couple of chances with Daire Doyle engineering the best of them almost out of nothing by neatly turning O’Brien before having a shot from a tight angle that Barry Murphy just about got enough on to prevent David McMillan being handed a tap in at the far post.

As things opened up in the second half, both sides managed to play a little more football but there was little of the intensity usually associated with these cross-city derbies and no real edge to the game.

Derek Pender was perhaps a little fortunate to stay on after ploughing through O’Brien with both feet off the ground but even that didn’t look especially malicious and the referee gave the defender the benefit of the doubt.

Flood found him less sympathetic when he went down in the box late on and the striker was shown a card for diving. It wasn’t all that hard to understand his decision to look for a spot kick because it was fairly clear by that stage that the visitors, whose substitutions were all forced by injuries, were simply incapable of posing a serious threat to Gary Rogers’s goal from open play.

The home side did step things up a bit in the closing stages with Crowley briefly looking at though he was going to pounce on a deflected Anto Murphy shot only to be flagged for offside before seeing his attempted shot smothered by Murphy.

Finally, though, it seemed that the hosts were on the verge of their breakthrough as the final seconds of normal time slipped by. O’Brien took down McFaul and after the initial confusion caused by Winter showing yellow then red to a player desperately protesting that he hadn’t already been booked, Crowley stepped up to hit a fairly tame spot kick low to Murphy’s left.

The crowd, already frustrated, took it badly and a handful remained preoccupied by O’Brien’s ongoing presence through the couple of minutes of injury time that followed. That, as it happens, was as good as it got for Fenlon.

ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC:Rogers; Pender, E McMillian, Mulcahy, Bermingham; Murphy, Bradley (McFaul, 82 mins), Crowley, Doyle; D McMillan, North (Daly, 72 mins).

BOHEMIANS:Murphy; Heary, Burns, Price, O'Brien; Brennan (Buckley, 51 mins), Rossiter, Bayly, Cahill (Dixon, 24 mins (Burke, half-time)); Flood, Traynor.

Referee: R Winter (Dublin)

Attendance:2,006