St Patrick's Athletic may be at the apron of the biggest success in their history after mounting a brave rearguard action to hold Celtic scoreless in the opening leg of their European champions league preliminary tie at Parkhead last night. Bruised, battered but never broken, they absorbed everything that the Scots could throw at them to earn the grudging admiration of a crowd of 57,000 which had gathered in expectation of a Celtic romp.
Cool experience has fitted League of Ireland teams for the task of deep containment on these occasions and seldom has it been undertaken with as much discipline and resource as St Patrick's dug in for the result they coveted.
At times it wasn't very pretty but romantic it certainly was as Celtic, with a team valued in multiples of millions of pounds, blatantly struggled to deliver on their pedigree. It was not the kind of introduction that Dr Jozef Venglos, their new coach, had hoped to make and at the end he, like the players in the green-and-white hoops, stole quietly away.
By contrast, the St Patrick's manager, Pat Dolan, was quite euphoric. "We came here to get some respect for Irish football and whatever happens in the second game at Tolka Park next Wednesday, I think we have succeeded.
"We set out to frustrate Celtic in the hope that we might catch them on the break and it almost worked out perfectly for us. We defended brilliantly at all times but if I'm honest, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that we didn't use the ball better in the top third of the field. Had we done so, we might well have won it at the death."
He was referring to an astonishing moment nine minutes from the end when, with 21 players camped in St Patrick's half of the field, Paul Osam broke superbly to give substitute Martin Reilly a run at goal. Reilly, doing everything right, took the ball inside Tom Boyd, one of several World Cup players in Celtic's team, but then with Parkhead strangely silent he got his angles marginally wrong and missed the target with the ensuing shot.
Kinsmanship didn't stretch to benevolence for St Patrick's at any stage of the game, as Celtic, sensing the importance of the occasion, set out to demoralise them with the pace and weight of their early assault. At the start of one of the more important seasons in a long and distinguished history, the Scots needed a win of some substance to set it all in train.
In the event it never materialised and for that the credit was down not just to the heroic goalkeeping of Trevor Wood but to the bravery and resilience of the men in front of him.
Colin Hawkins, doubtful until just a couple of hours before the kick-off, was quite magnificent in central defence, eventually reducing the threat presented by Henrik Larssen to almost nothing.
Alongside him Paki Lynch was almost equally influential and with Jeff Clarke recovering from an early buffeting by Reggie Blinker to compliment Paul Campbell on the opposite flank, there was just no way through for the Scots.
Osam, deployed just in front of the back four, ensured that neither Paul Lambert nor Craig Burley had an opportunity of rampaging through the middle and that was crucial in the first half at the summit of Celtic's chequered performance.
Eddie Gormley started slowly but when the chips were down and the Irish team was coming under even more concerted pressure in the third quarter, his was the steadying influence which kept the visitors afloat.
There was merit also in the performance of Martin Russell , their new signing from Portadown, and when he comes to reflect on the merit of this performance, Dolan will not be unmindful of some brave running by Ian Gilzean and before he retired Trevor Molloy.
There were occasions during the night when Celtic may have had problems of identity as The Fields of Athenry, the ballad hijacked by the Scots in recent years, rang out from the Irish supporters closeted in one corner of the stadium. Not that the home fans had much to sing about as they watched in anguish the ineptitude of a team which, in spite of monopolising the ball for 90 minutes, created no more than two real chances. On the first occasion Woods' reflexes were equal to the task of making the point-blank save from Larssen's header and then, two minutes before half-time, the goalkeeper was again perfectly positioned to parry a similar effort from Burley.
That was the stuff of heroics and having survived that barrage without buckling, the Irishmen came back all fired up for the job of capitalising on the self-doubt which even at that stage was beginning to show in Celtic faces.
Celtic never relented in the search for the winner which would have rescued them from their embarrassment but in the end the honour and the glory belonged to the part-time professionals of St Patrick's.
Celtic: Gould, Boyd, Mahe, McNamara (Donnelly 67), Rieper (Annoni 83), Stubbs, Larsson, Burley, Lambert, Blinker, Brattbakk (Jackson 45). Subs not used: McKinlay, MacKay, Kerr, McBride.
St Patrick's Ath: Wood, Clarke, Campbell, Lynch, Hawkins, Osam, Gormley, Russell, Molloy (Reilly 72), Braithwaite (Crolly 82), Gilzean (7). Subs not used: Byrne, Devereux, Long, Morgan, McKenna. Booked: Lynch, Molloy, Gormley, Wood.
Referee: B Benedik (Slovk)
