| It had to happen |
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| Tuesday, 08 August 2006 | |
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It had to happen, And if it had to happen, it was always likely to be UCD that would make it happen. Comforting in any way? No. Our first home defeat in the league for a year – was it Monaghan who beat us then? Watching the action unfold on Friday night was a new experience as I had never sampled Friday night football at the Showgrounds before. It was memorable – for all the wrong reasons. No need to get too negative about his, we rarely beat UCD anyway so why get too carried away over this – not worth it. We are better than we showed on Friday night, but there was a lesson to be learned also. And if you learn from your defeats, then that can’t be such a bad thing. The lesson – Until we can play a team like UCD off the pitch we will struggle in the Premier League – Simple Fact. It’s a good gauge by which we can measure our progress between now and the beginning of November when we can look forward to another trip to Belfield. Go there and win and we will have made progress – but more of what we saw on Friday night will make the manager’s job of renewing contracts for 2007 much easier? Poor Keith Foy. He has now entered the Kupono Low ‘hall-of-fame’ for missed penalties, but at least he didn’t blast it out of the ground. It was one of those nights – no I’m not going through my collection of Eagles music. We weren’t actually that bad, but we lacked fluency and if we had scored the penalty we would have won. It was more like a pre-season friendly at times – we were so disjointed. But then it’s hard to counter totally negative tactics. Like the number of times UCD kicked the ball away, delayed taking throw-ins and exaggerated injuries. How did the referee gave their ‘keeper a free-out when he was challenged outside the penalty area for a 50-50 ball? Some baffling decisions to be worked out. Frustrating was the one word I left the ground with. And it wasn’t frustration with the home team because we lost – it was frustrating watching UCD. Manager Pete Mahon said on TV 3 the previous week – when he was complaining about the Bohs penalty – “defending is also part of the game” – and I have to credit his side with that trait. They can defend well, but they’re frustrating to watch. They had no real interest in playing the second-half. At least I worked out why UCD have so few supporters (home or away) – you couldn’t watch that sort of stuff every week. Next week we’re back to Sunday football – it will be like ‘old’ times again – just remember don’t go the Lourdes Stadium in Drogheda – it’s United Park now. Is it that long since we were there? by Conall Collier |
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