Galway send St Patrick's packing

There was precious little in the way of sexy football and not even the distraction of a dispute over sexual orientation, but when the 6,300 strong crowd at Terryland Park heard the final whistle last night they didn't seem to mind one bit.

They certainly weren't dwelling too long on the quality of the football in home side's dressingroom afterwards as half of the crowd, the club's largest in many seasons, were desperately trying to get in to join the players' celebrations.

Eric Lavine, whose goal settled the tie in United's favour, seemed a little bemused by it all but it looked like being a long enough night for the 28-year-old's dramatically increased popularity to sink in.

Don O'Riordan, for one, was singing his praises, noting that Lavine's absence from the starting line-up was down to the fact that he has not always fulfilled his tremendous potential. "We've always known what a wonderful talent he is, though, and out there tonight he proved it to everybody," O'Riordan said.

The United boss admitted that his team's performance had been disappointing for the early part of the game with too many final passes fumbled in the area and too many set pieces simply bungled. In the normal course of events it would be a fairly lethal combination for a First Division outfit contemplating an upset against the league champions, but St Patrick's were scarcely at their best either and so until the frantic closing minutes, the home side's defence were never put under the sort of pressure they had been expecting before the start.

"We thought they were going to come out at us all guns blazing," said United full back Mick Quirke, who was afterwards named as the man of the match. "But after 20 minutes we were getting on top and by half-time we knew we could beat them."

In the end, all it took to achieve the feat was a single strike from a man who had only come into the game 12 minutes earlier, but who had already, in that time, made quite an impact.

Quirke started the move down the left and after his cross had been knocked back by Darragh Sheridan, the West Indian striker found himself with a lot of time to consider his options. "I was in two minds about it as the ball came towards me about 10 yards out but in the end I just decided to have a crack at it." Simple, as they say, but impressively effective.

Predictably, the goal cranked Liam Buckley's team into action but despite a few goalmouth scrambles late on, they found it difficult to carve out clear-cut chances. Stephen McGuinness probably went closest to grabbing an equaliser, or at least he should have done when Martin Russell picked him out with a corner from the right, but the defender was off balance as he struck his close-range shot and it actually went out for a throw.

His side wasn't helped by having to cope from early on with the loss of Eddie Gormley, who twisted his knee in a challenge and looks like to be out of action for a couple of weeks. Even in the early stages the midfielder's absence was felt with the league champions failing to cause the locals any real problems through the centre and relying, for the most part, on getting their wing backs into good forward positions from which to cross.

Even from there they struggled to test Mark Cobey who only looked to be in trouble once during the opening period. On that occasion, though, with Martin Russell's low 20-yard drive apparently heading for the bottom right corner, the United goalkeeper was helped out by opposing striker Trevor Molloy who strayed into the path of the shot and deflected it well wide of the mark.

At the other end it wasn't much more hectic with Trevor Wood spending a good deal of the period jogging across his area in order to keep warm. More than once, however, Watson gave hints of how much trouble he could cause, throwing himself in to block clearances, chasing after everything and willingly taking on Colin Hawkins or Packie Lynch whenever the opportunity arose.

The one thing he didn't get was a chance to have a crack directly at goal, but Lavine was just as happy to take whatever opportunities came his way.

Galway United: Cobey; Rossiter, Clery, Carter, Quirke; Sheridan, Dolan, Keane, Gorman; Watson, Thorntan. Subs: Lavine for Thorntan (57 mins), O'Flaherty for Watson (80 mins), Neary for Gorman (83 mins).

St Patrick's: Wood; McGuinness, Lynch, Hawkins; Croly, Gormley, Osam, Russell, Burke; Molloy, Gilzean. Subs: Morgan for Gormley (9 mins), Reilly for Gilzean (57 mins), Braithwaite for Molloy (72 mins).

Referee: J McDermott (Dublin).