WITH SPORTING FIXTURES across Britain and Ireland postponed due to the snowy conditions, this weekend was one very much lacking in goals from Irish players.
Just one Ireland player in the top two tiers of football in England and Scotland managed to find the scoresheet, and just three Irishmen scored in total over the weekend.
Andy Keogh
Cardiff’s Andy Keogh is one of Giovanni Trapattoni’s favoured substitutes, but is not rated highly by many Irish supporters.
However, he always works hard whenever he’s called upon for Ireland. The same was true on Saturday against Preston. Bluebirds forward Jay Bothroyd was taken off injured after just eight minutes, and the Dubliner was hauled off the substitutes’ bench to replace him.
It looked as if bottom-placed Preston (who had left Sean St Ledger and Keith Treacy at home) would win the game, until Keogh popped up with a lovely diving header in the 94th minute to rescue a point for the Welsh side.
David Forde & Alan Dunne
Keiren Westwood and Coventry City kept another clean sheet this weekend, but Millwall’s game against Scunthorpe saw two Irish keepers
in action.
David Forde of the home side fared much better, earning his ninth clean sheet of the season, just one less than QPR’s Paddy Kenny.
Joe Murphy in the Scunthorpe goal conceded three in a convincing Millwall victory. Forde’s defenders deserve as much praise, particularly Alan Dunne, who was just as impressive going forward as he was at the back, and was unlucky not to get on the scoresheet himself.
Clinton Morrison & Kevin Thornton
The former Ireland international striker is now plying his trade at Sheffield Wednesday, and scored in this weekend’s only League One fixture, away to Swansea in a 2-1 loss.
It’s Morrison’s seventh goal of the season, and fifth in the league. Northampton Town’s Kevin Thornton is having a wonderful start to 2010-11, and it’s probably only a matter of time before a team from a higher division than League Two snaps up the 24-year-old midfielder.
He scored for the sixth time this season, helping Northampton to a 2-0 win over Stockport and moving them to within seven points of the playoffs.
Ronan Hunt-Murphy writes about Irish football at GreenScene
