Shamrock Rovers 6 Dundalk 0:IAIN DOWIE once listed "bouncebackability" as one of his most prized talents and Stephen Kenny's side showed comfortably enough of it here to restore momentum to their title defence and banish the memory of last weekend's defeat in Inchicore.
From early in the second half the champions looked as though they might well eclipse the five they conceded in Richmond for they opened up their young opponents almost at will through the closing stages. Sure enough, they managed it in the end with Gary Twigg’s two late goals completing his first hat-trick at Tallaght and Daryl Kavanagh’s in stoppage time ensuring the scale of the victory would match the club’s biggest ever here.
Before hitting their stride a quarter of the way in, Rovers made a certain amount of trouble for themselves. There were signs of overconfidence as they sought to push the ball around at the back and through midfield but they would have got away with a lot more had it not been for the willingness of the likes of Steven McDonnell, Michael Rafter and Gary Shanahan to chase down and unsettle opponents.
During that opening spell the visitors passed the ball well themselves at times and even seemed capable of perhaps grabbing a rare goal – they have scored just two in the league so far, both in the win over UCD – but the couple of half chances they created slipped past and before long the champions began to raise their game.
Their breakthrough came after 31 minutes although it would have been a little earlier but for some fine goalkeeping by Peter Cherrie. He was fairly helpless for the opening goal, though, after Gary McCabe’s long, angled free had been turned back by Craig Sives, Chris Turner headed home from close range.
Within a minute of the restart Ronan Finn struck the foot of the post with a long, low drive and within two of that they had doubled their lead with Finn all too easily picking out Twigg on the edge of the six-yard box from where the Scot headed home his sixth goal of the season.
By then, Dundalk’s widespread inexperience had clearly caught up on them and only another cracking save by Cherrie and misdirected follow up shot by Billy Dennehy kept it to two until the break.
Seconds into the second half, though, the Kerryman made amends for his miss with a fine free kick curled to the bottom left corner and at that stage the only remaining issue for the visitors was whether they could keep their heads up and avoid a collapse.
For a while it looked as though they might scrape home without things getting too much worse alright although mainly because Rovers seemed intent on squandering all of their many chances. With the visitors’ resilience having long since abandoned them, though, their luck finally ran out too in those last 10 minutes.
SHAMROCK ROVERS: Jansson; McCormack, Oman, Sives, Powell; Finn (Brennan, 84 mins), Turner; McCabe, O’Neill (Greene, 80 mins), Dennehy (Kavanagh, 80 mins); Twigg.
DUNDALK: Cherrie; McLoughlin, Burns, Foran, Cunningham; Walsh (O’Neill, ht), Shields, Mountney, McDonnell (Thomas, half-time); Rafter (McKenna, 73 mins), Shanahan.
Referee: G Kelly (Cork).
