EUROPA LEAGUE SECOND QUALIFYING ROUND St Patrick's Ath 2 S Karaganda 0: (St Pat's win 3-2 on aggregate)YOU MIGHT think that they would have had their fill of travelling by now, but having made it safely through the second qualifying round of what's now called the Europa League for the third time in four years last night, it will be foreign fields all the way for Pete Mahon and his men.
This time next week they’ll be on the way home from the away leg against Karpaty Lviv.
A week after that it’s off to Tallaght for the home game.
They’ll face the Ukrainians next week without Daryl Kavanagh or Stephen Bradley, a couple of key players here in what was a fairly frantic affair who will be suspended after picking up their second bookings, both for time wasting, in this year’s competition.
Understandably, though, that wasn’t Mahon’s major concern last night after goals from Evan McMillan and Derek Doyle had been enough to overturn the 2-1 advantage Shakther had brought with them from Karagandy.
“Obviously I’m very, very pleased,” he said, “More than pleased really. It’s a great night for the supporters, the players and the staff. It was absolutely fantastic.
“I thought they would score, to be honest, and I know we had a little bit of luck at times, but you need that. And when you weigh it all up, after all we’ve been through over there, I’m very proud of what the players have achieved. It’s been very hard on them.
“I was hoping we’d be able to play the game here (in the next round) too and it’s disappointing in this day and age that we can’t get the ground up to scratch and have to go somewhere else.
“It will be difficult to replicate what we had here tonight (in Tallaght), but if we get a good crowd hopefully we’ll give it a go.”
The locals had actually started quietly, seeming to invite their opponents forward during the opening exchanges and almost conceding what would have been a devastating away goal to the Kazakhs within six minutes when Sergei Khizhnichenko fluffed an excellent chance to turn home a low curing cross from the right by Kairat Utabayev.
As they had been a couple of weeks back against IBV, they looked uncertain at the back and when they twice failed to clear the ball after an initial corner a few minutes later, Gary Rogers was called into action for the first time, with the goalkeeper preventing a low drive by Gediminis Vicius reaching the bottom left corner.
Steadily, though, Mahon’s men started to settle into their rhythm and, as it turned out, the visitors were every bit as inclined to ride their luck at the back with Kavangh a persistent threat down the right as Ian Daly and Doyle also provided fairly effective support to lone striker Danny North from the centre and left.
Shakther had a major height advantage around their own area, but it didn’t seem to make any difference when Evan McMillan rose highest in the centre of a packed six-yard box to head Bradley’s corner past the stranded Aleksandr Mokin 14 minutes in.
As it turned out, neither of their big Bosnian centre backs looked especially agile either, but it was their left Aleksandr Kirov whose lack of mobility proved more of a problem with the Kazakh, one of eight full internationals in the starting line up, at one point putting in the sort of clumsy challenge on Kavanagh that would presumably have yielded a penalty had the 24-year-old gone down a little more quickly.
The Belgian later waved away a much stronger claim for a spot-kick when Utabayev stopped a shot by Danny North with an outstretched arm.
It mattered little in the end.
St Patrick’s may never have settled into the sort of assured, possession football that clubs say they aspire to each year when they play in Europe, but Shakther were very poor and, apart from a shot by Maksat Bayshanov midway through the second period, Rogers was never really tested.
That chance came during what seemed to be shaping up to be a sustained bout of pressure with Mahon’s players starting to defend a little deeper.
Just as the crowd seemed to be in for a nail-biting last 20 minutes, though, the hosts grabbed themselves a second with Derek Pender firing a low cross towards the far post where Derek Doyle got the better of Utabayev to poke the ball home first time from a few yards with an extended leg.
Inevitably, Shakther sought to step things up as they chased the goal needed to force extra-time, but the locals looked confident and never seriously looked likely to surrender the winning position they had earned for themselves.
ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC: Rogers; Pender, E McMillan, Shorthall, Bermingham; McFaul, Bradley; Kavanagh, Daly (Mulcahy, 83 mins), Doyle (Murphy, 86 mins); North (D McMillan, 77 mins).
SHAKTHER KARAGANDY: Mokin; Utabayev (Bormantaev, 80 mins), Dzidic, Vasiljevic, Kirov; Bayshanov, Vicius; Konysbayev, Petronijevic (Dismanbetov, 73 mins), Kukeyev; Khizhnichenko.
Referee: S Delferiere(Belgium).
