Shelbourne's age old frailties were perfectly exposed at Belfield yesterday as the Students threw the title race wide open with two second-half goals from teenage wingers Eoin Bennis and Wayne Fitzell. Shelbourne utterly dominated the first half, and then, during the second, committed suicide.
UCD hardly got out of their own half and Shelbourne could, and should, have been out of sight on the scoreboard by half-time.
As it was, they had to settle for a 1-0 lead, ironically from a 22nd minute penalty. Dessie Baker, UCD's chief tormentor down the right side, cut inside Robert McAuley only to be tripped to the ground by Tony McDonnell. Stephen Geoghegan sent Seamus Kelly the wrong way for his fourth goal of the season.
Kelly's hands were the only ones on the UCD pumps up to that as the UCD goalkeeper kept Shelbourne out almost singlehandedly. He was in action after just three minutes with a superb diving save to turn a Tony Sheridan close-range volley round a post.
Stephen Geoghegan and Pat Fenlon were marginally off target with headers before Kelly made another sublime save in the 11th minute when turning a Fenlon volley away one-handed.
Amazingly, Shelbourne's soft underbelly was exposed, giving a hint of things to come, and they were almost punished 10 minutes before the break when UCD might have equalised completely against the run of play.
Shelbourne goalkeeper Alan Gough, who had only the odd back pass to deal with up to then, misjudged a long throw from McAuley and Jason Sherlock's header was cleared away from virtually under the crossbar.
As if they had been given a taste of what they were capable of, UCD came out for the second-half a different side and they were level within 10 minutes.
Bennis beat the offside trap to run through onto Sherlock's pass and, though he still had much to do, he did it with some aplomb, and cut past two tackles to drive the ball home from 15 yards.
Another sweeping move up the right brought the winning goal on 65 minutes. Fitzell dispossessed Declan Geoghegan and played a one-two with Robert Griffin to put himself in on goal and shoot into the bottom corner.
