Dundalk likely to rest key men ahead of bigger games

There will, it seems safe to assume, be changes on Tuesday evening when Dundalk head to Inchicore with the champions bound to rest up players ahead of next week's bigger games and Liam Buckley tempted too, perhaps, cast an early eye towards the future.

Neither manager, in fact, has anything of consequence to play for and while the hosts would presumably quite like to rain on Dundalk’s parade, the notion is unlikely to provide much by way of an edge to an evening that would have had a rather different feel to it if only Bohemians had held on at Oriel.

"To be able to switch off for a day or two now is fantastic," says Brian Gartland whose second half winner on Sunday evening effectively wrapped up the title and made tonight's encoubnter fairly redundant, "and then we've got to think about Zenit; Zenit away, like, it's massive, I laugh when I say it! And then straightaway the Cup final… so we don't really get much rest.

“I suppose everyone will be thinking we’re going to kick on and we just to do better and better the whole time,” he says “but this was the priority, Europe is brilliant but this was the priority. “It’s the first time (and side has won three successive titles) since the Rovers team in the Eighties. I saw someone said the Premier Division was only formed in ‘85 and it hadn’t been done since.

“It’s phenomenal, especially as there were questions asked and at the start of the season when not many tipped us to win it and a lot went for Cork. That wasn’t a driving force behind us but if people ask questions of you, we want to answer them and we did.”

He helped to answer a few himself, producing another strong season in defence and chipping in with some important goals, something he says everybody knew they needed to do after the departure of Richie Towell last season.

“Every year we’ve lost big players who have got big goals, Richie with 29 goals, and questions have always been asked of us. There is one individual, Davey (McMillan), has got a great amount of goals. But the whole team has chipped in, it’s been tremendous and 13 goals between three (he got seven while Dane Massey and Andy Boyle each have three) of the back four isn’t too shabby.”

Pat McEleney might be described, perhaps, something of a replacement for Towell and the midfielder had a good first season for Stephen Kenny even if he did not get quite as many goals as he would have liked.

“Yeah, I’ve contributed but there are more goals to add,” he admits. “I’ve got a right few assists but listen, I’m a lucky man to be at this club. It’s an unbelievable team. My granny could have come down to this team and won the league. They are such great lads, outstanding. They helped me settle in and it’s something I’ll never forget.”

The 24 year-old is one of the walking wounded after what have been a hectic few weeks, however, and Kenny may well be tempted to empty his bench for this evening’s game. McEleney is, in any case, “in tatters,” by his own estimation and limped out of Sunday’s game late on while Massey is suspended and Stephen O’Donnell remains sidelined with a hamstring by a hamstring problem. They are unlikely to be the only ones to sit this one out.