President’s Cup
Shamrock Rovers 3
St Patrick’s Athletic 1
A NIGHT OF history for Shamrock Rovers, even if it won’t live long in the memory and is unlikely to remain a milestone moment for much longer.
A record crowd of 8,053 were at Tallaght Stadium as the League of Ireland Premier Division champions beat FAI Cup winners St Patrick’s Athletic 3-1 to win the President’s Cup.
A brace of second-half goals from Trevor Clarke and one for new signing Josh Honohan proved enough to edge the Hoops to victory.
On-loan Liverpool goalkeeper goalkeeper Marcelo Pitaluga will want to forget the third as quickly as possible, allowing Clarke’s tame shot to fumble through his grasp just seconds before Jamie Lennon netted a consolation for the Saints.
The Brazilian stopper arrived with a spotlight on him given the profile of his parent club and while his error was not the reason for his side falling to defeat it is an early black mark against him.
Five of the Saints’ winter arrivals were in the starting XI for Jon Daly’s side while Stephen Bradley had double that amount of first teamers either on the bench or sitting in the stands.
This was a fixture very much part of both teams’ pre-season plans – the serious stuff starts next Friday – yet such is the momentum behind the domestic game it still managed to serve up a record crowd for a domestic fixture at Tallaght Stadium.
Aside from the travelling St Pat’s fans selling out their 2,500 allocation, the Rovers faithful arrived en masse to celebrate their four-in-a-row champions.
With the impressive new North Stand also officially opened, the 10,000 capacity might just be hit this season. The first visit of Bohemians on 29 March is most likely to achieve that.
Rovers’ campaign will be well underway by that point, of course, and despite silverware being up for grabs Bradley was content to use this as a final opportunity to get his squad minutes before Dundalk come to town for the opening night.
Combined with those five new faces also starting for Pat’s – among them Pitaluga and former Cork City striker Ruairi Keating – the opening 45 minutes lacked rhythm and purpose.
Still, there were still two yellow cards dished out to Rovers pair Honohan and Conan Noonan for late tackles while Jamie Lennon was also booked for one too many fouls on the livel Neil Faruggia.
It was the Rovers wing back, starting on the right in a makeshift side, that may well have opened the scoring on 29 minutes had Darragh Burns not taken the ball off his toes with a wild swipe of his right foot from a Darragh Nugent pullback.
It was the best move of the night until that point.
Rovers then made five changes at half time and within 10 minutes of the re-start Clarke made his mark, racing onto a precise Noonan pass in behind in Aaron Bolger.
The left wing back slowed his run when required to produce his finish and he delivered with a lovely striker across Pitaluga into the top corner.
The sight of Chris Forrester limping off injured moments later will only add to the concern for Daly and St Pat’s fans.
They couldn’t dwell on losing him, but when Honohan towered about Joe Redmond on 63 minutes to power home a near-post header from Noonan’s corner it already felt as though the game was taken beyond them.
Kian Leavy was a sporadic spark in the final third but his threat was easily snuffed out.
The game looked to be dwindling to its inevitable conclusion until Pitaluga’s blunder from Clarke’s tame shot on 89 minutes.
Rory Gaffney did well to create the space for him to run into down the left and he was given too much freedom to drive into the box.
Lennon produced a nice finish from a corner for the consolation but the night ended with Rovers parading some more silverware.
Shamrock Rovers: Pohls; Cleary (Grace HT), Hoare (Barrett 76), Honohan; Farrugia (Watts HT), Poom (O’Neill HT), Noonan, Nugent, Burns, Kavanagh (T Clarke HT); Greene (captain) (Gaffney HT).
St Patrick’s Athletic: Pitaluga; Bolger (Turner 62), Redmond (captain), Keeley, Breslin; B Kavanagh (C Kavanagh 62), Lennon, Forrester (McClelland 58), Leavy (Nolan 83), Mulraney (Sjoberg 76); Keating (Melia 83).
Referee: D McGraith.
Attendance: 8,053
