St Patrick's Ath 0, Cork City 3IT WAS fairly standard post-match press conference stuff on Saturday night when Paul Doolin instinctively observed that Richmond Park "isn't an easy place to come to". Generally speaking he'd be right but after watching their side go down by three at home for the third time in six league games there this season, few amongst the local supporters in Inchicore would agree with the Cork City boss.
This, indeed, made it seven defeats in eight games for the self-styled “Supersaints” with the one win coming in a hard-fought game against Drogheda United in mid-April. As it happens, Alan Mathews was watching from the stand and having seen his side win in the league for the first time this season 24 hours earlier, he might, on the strength of this performance, be relishing the rematch in a few weeks’ time.
Asked if he could take any positives from the outing, Jeff Kenna could only point to the fact that City hadn’t added another couple of goals in the second half. That, though, had a whole lot more to do with the visitors’ apparently deciding that they’d done enough for one night than with any stiffening of the home side’s all-too -limp resistance.
The game was effectively over after 33 minutes when Fahrudin Kudozovic curled the ball across the goal and into the top corner from the edge or the area for the visitors’ third. Stephen Maher appeared to stand too far off the Cork player as he wound up for the shot but the finish was excellent and the quality of the defending was far less of an issue than for either of City’s first two goals.
The St Patrick’s goalkeeper, Gary Rogers, had gifted the first of the evening to Denis Behan on a plate by dropping a Colin Healy corner in front of the striker who lifted it high into the roof of the net from a few metres out. And four minutes later, Greg O’Halloran made it two with an unchallenged header from the middle of the box.
Then, after Kudozovic had made absolutely sure of the points, Stuart Byrne compounded the home side’s misery by picking up a straight red card for what was a bewilderingly reckless challenge on the Bosnian inside the Cork City half.
Some teams, of course, manage to look like they still have 11 men on the pitch after they’ve been reduced to 10 but here, the home side might well have had nine for all the impact they made on what remained of the game.
Expectations are, as Kenna acknowledged after the final whistle, high at a club like St Patrick’s Athletic but having seen the initial 4-3-3 formation transformed into an utterly toothless 4-4-1 following Byrne’s departure, the rare occasions on which Mark Quigley managed to beat a man while venturing forward from midfield or Ryan Moran successfully chased down the ball in attack won warm applause from home supporters no longer in a position to set the bar too far above ground level.
Had City really tried, they would surely have had another couple of goals for they utterly controlled the second half. Instead, Doolin rather happily settled for what was his side’s best win of the season, one that takes the southerners level with Bohemians at the top of the table.
“It wasn’t a big game for us because we could go top,” he said afterwards, “it was a big game because we could keep up our recent run of good results.
ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC:Rogers; Maher, Gavin, Haverty, Ryan; O'Connor, Cawley, Byrne; Guy, Quigley, Moran (Stevens, 79 mins).
CORK CITY:Connor; Sullivan, O'Halloran (Long, 87 mins), Murray, Murphy; Silgailis (Kiely, 79 mins), Healy, Lordan, Gamble, Kudozovic (O'Connor, 83 mins), Behan.
Referee:R Winter (Dublin).
