Sport

Farrelly defies run of play

St Patrick's Athletic - 0 Bohemians - 1: Quite how his players let this game slip through their fingers will baffle manager …

Paul O'Hehir at Richmond Park
Sat Jul 15 2006 - 01:00

St Patrick's Athletic - 0 Bohemians - 1: Quite how his players let this game slip through their fingers will baffle manager John McDonnell over the coming days. His side played scintillating football at times yet relinquished full points to a Bohemians side they had suppressed in almost every department.

Such was their dominance, the hosts created more scoring opportunities in the opening quarter than most teams could wish for in 90 minutes.

Collectively their work rate was phenomenal, a trait instilled by McDonnell, whose astute preseason signings continue to revitalise the Inchicore club. Cruelly, though, that endeavour went unrewarded.

Three of those purchases, Trevor Molloy, Paul Keegan and Mark Rutherford, provided the platform from which St Patrick's initially terrorised Bohemians.

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Linking superbly with Keegan and Rutherford, Molloy and the rest of his team-mates soon had a stunned Bohemians defence pleading for leniency.

Keegan should have put his side ahead after 20 minutes. Having initially shown a neat touch to control John Frost's through ball, he delayed his shot and Des Byrne weighed in with a crucial intervention.

Rutherford then fired the loose ball off the bar while Mark Quigley's follow-up goal was ruled offside.

Bohemians' surges forward were restricted, although strikers Vinny Arkins and Paul Devlin forced Barry Ryan into action.

However, it was Gareth Farrelly's ferocious curling free from the edge of the area that broke the deadlock on the half-hour.

The strike certainly disrupted the manner in which St Patrick's approached the game thereafter. Needing an equaliser, they surrendered their enterprising play of the first half for more direct application in the second, which Bohemians comfortably contained.

Still, though, Farrelly gifted St Patrick's a reprieve when fouling Dave Mulcahy in the area but Stephen O'Brien batted away Mark Quigley's penalty 15 minutes from time.

ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC: Ryan; S Quigley, Brennan, Maguire, Frost; Rutherford, Mulcahy, Foley (O'Connor, 72 mins), Molloy (Foley, 88 mins); M Quigley; Keegan (Armstrong, 72 mins).

BOHEMIANS: O'Brien; Rice, Ferguson, McGuinness, Byrne; Kelly (Harkin, 72 mins), Hunt, Farrelly, Ward; Arkins (Leech, 88 mins), Devlin.

Referee: I Stokes (Dublin).