National League: Coming away from Tolka Park on Friday evening it was tempting to think that Shelbourne's unattractively earned win over a disappointing St Patrick's was the sort of performance that just might haul them back into a championship race that, once again, badly needs a bit of life breathed into it. Emmet Malone reports.
Received wisdom has it that any team with serious title ambitions must win games even when it plays poorly. Pat Fenlon's side could hardly have produced more compelling evidence of their credentials in that department.
Having done their bit, though - and they did at least grab the couple of chances that came their way late on with some conviction - Shelbourne required some assistance from Bray Wanderers, a team whose points to quality of performance ratio over the past couple of months suggested that they were perhaps overdue a decent result.
A couple of seasons ago you could have depended on Sunday's game with Bohemians at the Carlisle Grounds to produce plenty of blood and guts, but some of the bite has gone out of the clashes since Roddy Collins started assembling an Irish community in the north west of England.
A little too much, as it turned out, from Bray's perspective. When Wanderers play well they look a decent side. The experience provided by the sprinkling of league winners through the side shows in the way they push the ball around and create space.
But injuries have been a problem for Pat Devlin this year and the team's confidence can't have been overflowing given they had won just one and drawn three of their games before Sunday's against the league leaders.
Still, it was surprising the ease with which the visiting side were allowed to retain possession, take such a patient approach to their build-up work and generally assume such control over the game. Several of the Bohemians side certainly played well - Bobby Ryan, Mark Rutherford and Kevin Hunt all contributed much to the win - but too few of the Bray players looked as though they had an appetite for imposing themselves on what turned out to be a frustratingly one-sided game. That will have to change over the coming weeks if they are going to dig themselves out of trouble at the foot of the table.
What Bray did have on Sunday, which St Patrick's sorely lacked on Friday, was a striker capable of posing a real threat. Both teams attempted to absorb pressure at the back and then get forward quickly on the break. Even with Pat Dolan committing himself to providing Ger McCarthy with support on either side, however, the Inchicore club's centre forward gave Steve Williams little cause for concern.
Wanderers may have found themselves under a good deal more pressure, but they did at least give the impression that when they won possession and got the ball forward to Jason Byrne they could snatch a goal at almost anytime. With Mbabazi Livingstone and Tony Bird at the top of their game, so too might St Patrick's, but neither are anything close to their best, and it would be hard to imagine McCarthy producing 10 league goals, as Byrne has, for a team struggling as badly as Bray.
In the end, then, Bohemians' win was probably the better of the two, and having maintained their seven-point lead as the race moves to within seven games of its end they are really beginning to look unstoppable. With time running out the pressure is mounting on Shelbourne, and next weekend they will simply have to beat a UCD team which has managed two wins and two draws from its last four games.
Fenlon continues to hope for a "few twists and turns" before the race ends. But having shot to the top of the table when this campaign got under way and stayed there, Bohemians look increasingly capable of taking this championship in a manner that, in years to come, may be recalled as being 2002's straight story.
