SOCCER SETANTA CUP FIRST ROUND, SECOND LEGS: St Patrick's Ath 0 Cliftonville 1: Cliftonville win 2-0 on aggregate:LIAM BUCKLEY'S extensive overhaul of the St Patrick's Athletic squad at Richmond Park has prompted talk in some quarters that the Inchicore outfit might push on from last year to mount a challenge for the league.
It would be foolish to be too dismissive on the basis of last night’s defeat by Cliftonville but the home crowd might well be concerned that the new bunch of players are no better at cups than the old one.
The Dubliners’ involvement in the Setanta Sports backed event was ended by the same Irish League outfit 12 months ago but at least then they came close to turning a three-goal deficit around in the second leg.
Here, the bar was set much lower but the home side repeatedly crashed through it over the course of a first half in which they dominated but squandered a succession of chances before being deservedly put away late on as they tired after having been reduced to 10 men.
There were some positives for the locals to take from the game, most notably the way they passed the ball about in midfield, Christy Fagan’s movement and capacity to carve out chances for team mates and the threat posed at set pieces by Kenny Browne.
The failure to convert one of the many early chances tended to overshadow everything else while some of the second-half defending was pretty poor even before John Russell was shown a straight red for a challenge on Ciaran Caldwell and, within a minute, Joe Gormley, doubled to Belfast side’s lead from the first leg.
“We should really still be in the competition,” said Fagan afterwards. “We should have had a few goals in the first half but unfortunately we couldn’t any of them away. Then the red card changed everything.”
Buckley conceded that his Cliftonville had edged the last 30 minutes with his players, he reckoned, having tired after that although to be fair, having been kept very quiet during the first half, the Northern Irish side had twice gone close to scoring in the early stages of the second period too.
Still, to go out was a significant disappointment to the Dubliners, who also had pressed long and hard in search of a goal at Solitude last week only to return home having conceded instead.
Here, a much changed side set about cancelling out the deficit and carved more than enough chances over the first half to coast into the next round. Their finishing, though, consistently let them down while Ryan Brown also kept Cliftonville in things with a couple of smart saves.
On at least a couple of occasions the goalkeeper really should have been rendered helpless and Dean Kelly, who watched from the stand prior to signing for the home side, will presumably have fancied his chances of doing somewhat better.
Jake Kelly passed up St Patrick’s best chance of the night after good work by Fagan and Russell went closest with a fierce drive that crashed against the post but Gormley showed the way 20 minutes from time when he pounced to fire home the loose ball after Diarmuid O’Carroll had headed George McMullan’s free against the cross bar.
ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC:Murphy; O'Brien, Flynn, Browne, Bermingham; Chambers (Rossiter, 90 mins); O'Connor, Russell, Bolger, Kelly (O'Flynn (68 mins); Fagan (Daly, 80 mins).
CLIFTONVILLE:Brown; R Scannell, Caldwell, McVeigh, Seydak; Boyce, Catney, McMullan, Templeton (Garrett, 81 mins); Gormley (C Scannell, 81 mins), O'Carroll (M Donnelly, 85 mins).
Referee: R Winters (Wicklow)
