Resilient St Pat’s top the table
Having seen their wings clipped in defeat to Dundalk and Shamrock Rovers over recent weeks, St Patrick’s Athletic made it two wins from two on Friday night, and in doing so returned to the Premier Division summit.
Their opponents, Bohemians, opened the scoring after just eight seconds in Inchicore, marking the fastest League of Ireland goal in decades, but there were few subsequent moments of discomfort for Stephen Kenny’s men. Pat’s created incessantly, engineering all sorts of routes into the box where Bohs often looked content just to hold the ball.
The most pleasing takeaway for Kenny might be his side’s resilience. Alongside the early concession, the Saints lost Aidan Keena to injury in the first half. Neither setback affected their impetus.
Chris Forrester came on in Keena’s stead and offered a reminder of the brains he can add to the energy and zeal of younger legs around him. No one pedals the machine quite like Kian Leavy, who looks unstoppable when he carries the ball at pace these days, bursting beyond midfield and weaving through oncoming traffic.
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Then there was Ryan Edmondson, who stepped up in the absence of his strike partner to convert his fifth and sixth goals of the season. The former Leeds man is looking a shrewd replacement for Mason Melia, and is now responsible for a quarter of the goals scored by the league’s most prolific attack.
GAA pitch the way forward for Derry?
Several weeks ago, Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley said of Arsenal-bound Victor Ozhianvuna that “as the pitches get better, he will get better because it suits him”.
It speaks to the 17-year-old’s talent, then, that in a game heavily curtailed by the bobbly GAA surface of Celtic Park for their game against Derry City on Friday Ozhianvuna was probably the best player in green and white, trusting his ability to manipulate the ball in close quarters where others, seemingly following instructions, went long.
Equally, James Clarke, another ball-playing man of the half-spaces, shone among the ricochets by tapping into a similar vein of self-belief. Clarke won the day for Derry with a scrappy enough goal, but his performance overall was stylish; both he and Ozhianvuna stood out as anomalies in a low quality affair.
The most spectacular moment of the game was a first-half volley from John O’Sullivan that thundered against the Derry crossbar, arriving in the middle of a seven-second period in which the ball didn’t touch the ground.
Perhaps it suits Derry – desperately struggling for cohesion after their busy, misshapen off-season – to play a little less football. Tiernan Lynch will be buoyed by his side’s doggedness on Friday, as well as the wider sense of unity instilled by the move to their temporary new home, which drew an impressive attendance of over 7,000.
“I thought it was an awful game,” said Bradley at full time. “I think the pitch dictated that.” He added Rovers were good value for a point, but neither side controlled proceedings.
Control, some may argue, is overrated. By the time the shiny new pitch at the Brandywell is ready for action, Derry can reimpose a death-by-football approach if they like, but collective grit and straightforward defensive principles may serve them well in the coming weeks.
James McClean sparks Astroturf debate
James McClean’s latest attention-grabbing Instagram story was a poignant one, suggesting his career may be drawing to a close as a result of an ongoing hip issue that has plagued him over the past few years.
The Derry City man cited playing and training on Astroturf as an unexpected aggravator, speeding up the damage “much faster” than he had expected. Having been informed by a specialist that his body currently “has no business being on a football pitch”, McClean revealed he was attending another appointment on Friday to gauge the possibility of surgery.
He missed his side’s 1-0 victory over Shamrock Rovers, and it is not yet known when, or whether, he will return for the Candystripes.
Players and managers around the League of Ireland have voiced similar complaints around artificial surfaces over the years, and though Derry are now moving away from synthetic grass with their Brandywell redevelopment, the shift may have come too late for one of Irish football’s biggest names.
Leaky defence continues to cost Shelbourne
Twenty-one goals conceded in 12 games is a record that will infuriate Shelbourne manager Joey O’Brien, and on Friday’s evidence his side is far from moving in the right direction.
A pacifying first half at Tolka Park had Shels 2-0 up and in full control against Drogheda United. Harry Wood was fizzing, a magnet for the ball in the final third and responsible for setting up both goals. Wood may well have been the story of the night were it not for Drogs producing three goals in 15 second-half minutes to transform the game.
Warren Davis deserves great credit for his hand in two of those three goals, but the ease with which Shelbourne’s fragility revealed itself was remarkable. After the blow of conceding easily from a corner kick, it suddenly seemed as though any sort of ball into the box would cause Shels untold grief.
It looked briefly redemptive when the sides traded goals late on, with Wood first equalising from the spot and Conor Keeley then winning it, madly and brilliantly, from distance.
A 4-3 victory moves Drogheda up to eighth in the table, level on points with their opponents, who will be granted little reprieve as they attempt to find solid footing for their season in the midst of a busy fixture schedule.
Elsewhere, Waterford equalised with the last action of the game to take a point from Galway United at the RSC despite the visitors dominating much of the game.
