Conor Keeley popped up with two goals in five minutes to prove the difference as Drogheda United continued their impressive start to the season, beating 10 man Derry City 3-1.
Tiernan Lynch’s side started off the better of the two, in the opening minutes of the match a Micheal Duffy cross found its way to Adam O’Reilly however his attempt was blocked and put out for a corner.
Derry continued to put on the pressure, a long ball was poorly defended by Drogheda, allowing Micheal Duffy to pick up the ball, cut inside into space but his long range effort was high, wide and into the Candystripes new 2800 capacity safe standing stand.
Again Micheal Duffy was the focal point of Derry City’s attack, Liam Boyce laid it off to the former Dundalk man but his shot would only end up being a comfortable save for Luke Dennison.
The second half was more of the same, Derry were comfortably on top and the scoreboard would finally show that, Ronan Boyce with a beautiful bit of skill, flicking the ball over the Drogheda fullbacks head and before the ball could touch the ground putting a cross in that was met by Liam Boyce who nodded home the games opening goal.
That wouldn’t be the end of Liam Boyce’s involvement in the match because two minutes later he committed a cynical foul on Conor Keeley, who had burst forward on the counter attack. Boyce’s foul was a textbook yellow card and was his second of the match, two minutes after giving Derry City the lead he was shown red and the Candystripes were reduced to 10 men.
It was an action packed couple of minutes, because Drogheda were able to take advantage of having an extra man, within two minutes of Boyce’s red card, Conor Keeley scored a beautiful volley to bring his side level.
In less than 10 minutes Derry went from taking the lead, to having a man sent off and then going behind, poor defending allowed Keeley to have another attempt on the volley and ended in the same result with the former St Pats man finding the back of the net.
Kevin Doherty’s side were able to put the game to bed with Warren Davies scoring his fourth goal of the season, a third volley of the night for Drogheda and blame could again be put on Derry’s inability to get rid of the ball.
Match Summary
The game was one of two halves, Derry were the better team in the first, creating the better chances and having the large share of possession but the sending off was the turning point that allowed Drogheda to get back into the game and pick up all three points
Drogheda remain top of the league and despite being a team many tipped for relegation they might find themselves in a title race. It’s another disappointing night for Derry City with similar problems to last season of being able to keep the ball but not able to do anything with it.
LOITALK MOTM
Its hard to look past Conor Keeley, although Liam Boyce beat him in the air to put Derry in front, Keeley made up for it, getting Boyce sent off and scoring two goals. He has been one of the standout players in the Premier Division so far and has been instrumental in Drogheda’s early season success.