With the end of the first round of fixtures generally seen as a decent time to take stock of how the league is shaping up, Dundalk should be happy with their lot come Monday evening. In addition to holding a five-point lead at the top of the table, the champions are already the top flight’s leading scorers as well as having the joint best defence.
For Shamrock Rovers and St Patrick’s Athletic, then, the task tonight is to tighten things up at the top, at least for the duration of the bank holiday weekend.
Having dropped points in Limerick, Pat Fenlon’s men host a Drogheda side that has taken just two points from the last 24 but United managed a rare league success in Tallaght last season and Johnny McDonnell believes the way his side is set up is actually better suited to the big occasions.
“We’ve put in our best displays this season against St Pat’s, Cork and Dundalk,” he said. “It’s easier for us to be set-up on the counter-attack and to get in amongst the opposition. Last week [a particularly disappointing defeat at the hands of Longford] wasn’t like that but it was a hiccup and we won’t dwell on it now.”
That said, he readily admitted that tonight’s opponents were likely to pose his side some problems, with matters not helped by doubts over Lloyd Buckley’s fitness and the absence, due to suspension, of Sean Thornton. “I think it’s the best squad that Rovers have had for a few years,” said McDonnell, “and it will be a difficult challenge for us.”
On the face of it, sure enough, the other Dubliners with title ambitions would appear to face the tougher night tonight. Liam Buckley’s men cannot really afford to drop too many more points in what might be regarded as winnable games and they may have been handed a bad time to head west given the scale of Galway’s win over Bray last weekend.
“We’d a great win last week against Sligo in Richmond Park,” said Buckley, whose early-season injury crisis in defence goes some way towards explaining their shaky start to the campaign.
“I was happy with the result and performance, but we still have some things to improve on. We need to now put together a consistent run of performances and hopefully we can do that in Galway. They’re a good side though, so it won’t be easy. But we’ll go there with the aim of performing well and getting the three points.”
Tommy Dunne, inevitably, will have other ideas and things will certainly seem a good deal more positive after the goals scored last weekend, an improvement the manager is keen is to seize upon.
“I feel like we should have nothing to fear within this league,” said Dunne, who still has a few injury problems, with Jason Molloy, Andy O’Connell and Kilian Cantwell all ruled out.
“We have to be more ruthless in our play and I think that’s starting to become more evident in recent weeks. We’re working on it.”
