A match review written by Matt O’Rourke
Another 3 points added to our tally sees Shelbourne sit 7 points ahead of the pack. A very boring 2-1 win over Dundalk nets us 3 points going into our 2 games next week.
To be deadly honest we didn’t play well at all, we just seemed to be down a gear compared to that lacklustre Dundalk team. If it was any other team playing us there, we would have definitely lost.
First half goes down as mediocre. From the whistle we just weren’t producing anything. It always felt like when we got an attack, we were always looking to make an extra pass, even if we had a good place to shoot from. We just couldn’t make any proper threats until the end.
In the 8th minute Dundalk had a good opportunity, but Conor Kearns got to it and saved it. About halfway through the tenth we had an alright shot, Liam Burt shooting at the Scottish keeper but the ball lacked any sort of power and was easily saved.
From that point onwards it was a very slow, boring game with not much more of happening up until the 36th when we had an amazing attack, Sean Boyd squaring it but a Dundalk defender gets in between Smith and the ball and it goes out. 44th minute sees Dundalk forward Cameron Elliot have the ball when Paddy Barret makes a risky challenge, which kicks off a scrap on the field. During this week’s see Mark Coyle throw Dundalk Midfielder alien Oostenbrink a good few metres in the other direction. The result of this was a yellow card for Coyle, Barret and Elliot, and a bruised ego for the Dutch Dundalk midfielder.
That’s the first half, nothing really special, mediocre at best. Dundalk played well, but their keeper Ross Munro was lucky not to concede after making some mistakes, and more in the second half as well.
Let’s talk about the second half:
In the 50th minute, Coyler gets the ball in our half, brings it up a bit and passes it to Liam Burt in the centre of the field. Liam keeps it and brings it all the way up to just outside the box when he takes a shot, curves around the keeper and into the back of the net, 1-0 to Shelbourne, and an amazing first goal for Liam.
In the 63rd Minute Duffer takes off Matty Smith for Evan Caffery.
After this, it starts to settle down again with only Dundalk making good attacking play, but we did have some scary attacks in between due to Munro making mistakes. In the 73rd, we’re on the attack and Liam Burt gets slide tackled but we manage to keep possession, and the ball ends up going back to Liam Burt on the very left of the box, who brings it close to the edge of the pitch. He tries to pass it into Boyd who’s waiting for an opportunity to strike but it takes a deflection of Dundalk defender Hayden Muller and goes down as an own goal, 2-0 to Shelbourne. Duffer then makes 2 sets of double subs, the first being in the 77th minute with him taking off Liam Burt and Sean Boyd off for John O’Sullivan and John Martin. The second set was in the 83rd when Duffer took off Jarvis and Lunney for Dean Williams and Kameron Ledwidge.
Again, it goes back to quite a boring game. 4 minutes of time were added , and about halfway trough the 90th Horgan sends a ball in from the left side which finds Robbie Benson for the header and it goes into the bottom right corner of the goal, Kearns unable to get to it means the score line ends up being a 2-1 win for Shelbourne at home.
Overall, although we won it was a bit disappointing. We just didn’t try in that first half, and it was obvious that Duffer had a word with them at half time because we came out much stronger in that second half. The first half to put it bluntly, was a painful watch. But it’s good to see that we were able to cop on and get a win.
My man of the match would be Liam Burt, who had a stunning goal, and was the “assist” on that Dundalk own goal. Overall he was responsible for most of our attacking play and I thought he was definitely our strongest player on the field.
Easter Monday sees us host Derry, and the Friday we head up to Drogheda, both being very important games to get results out of. I hope we do turn around what happened today and go out strong against Derry.
I hope everyone has a great Easter Sunday. Thank you for reading as always.
UTFR