St Patrick's are a cut above

It may not have been quite the classic that the National League wanted, but then compared to the fare offered up for the cameras so far this season, last night's clash between the Premier Division's top dogs wasn't half bad.

A match that produced a couple of goals from a hatful of chances and as frantic a finish as you are likely to get sent the estimated 6,500 crowd home with plenty to talk about and confirmed St Patrick's Athletic's current claim to be the best in the land.

Last week Pat Dolan's side had to be patient, waiting for the opportunity to get in behind Finn Harps to grab a late winner. This time, against a Shelbourne side which sparkled, but only after they went behind, they had to defend from deep. They were up to the task, but not by very much. The home side's late assault on goal brought a match which had started brightly but then faded back to life. Dessie Baker, playing on the right side of midfield and, late in the game, up front alongside Stephen Geoghegan and Mark Rutherford, tortured the St Patrick's back four. However, no matter how many balls Shelbourne pumped into the centre from wide, there was nobody in the area who knew the way to goal.

On another night Tony Sheridan might have stunned us with one of his occasional moments of brilliance, or Stephen Geoghegan would surely have provided the final touch required. As it was, though, goalkeeper Trevor Wood was forced to make just one save of genuine quality, while his defenders busied themselves scrambling away the rest of the danger.

For all their possession, though, Shelbourne might just as easily have lost by more than the two goals which separated the sides at the final whistle.

While referee Hugh Byrne may have deprived Shelbourne of a good scoring opportunity when he got in the way of Dave Campbell's square ball for Baker with just over 20 minutes to play, there was some question mark over a disallowed St Patrick's goal, put in by Ian Gilzean but not given because of a questionable offside decision. St Patrick's and Martin Reilly also had claims for a penalty when Rutherford stepped into him with five minutes remaining.

You could argue that he did the game a favour by keeping it alive for the closing minutes - if he did it was as close as he came all evening to having a positive impact on the proceedings.

Shelbourne's problems had been evident enough through a first half in which they more or less surrendered the game in midfield. "Our three central players let us down before the break," said their manager Damien Richardson, who, nevertheless, left all three there for the bulk of the second period.

Pat Fenlon, tucked just behind Dave Campbell and Sheridan for much of the match, was especially disappointing, misreading his team-mates intentions time and again and misdirecting his shots to a hopeless degree. But he was certainly not alone in having an off night for Sheridan, who might have been capable of turning the game had he one of his better nights, barely made an impression on proceedings. Campbell went equally unnoticed.

With the St Patrick's playmakers given such freedom, the visitors always seemed the more likely to open the scoring. The only surprise when the goal came was that Paul Osam, who had been quiet up until then, was the one to turn the ball in after he got on to the end of Eddie Gormley's curling free from the left.

Within seconds the home side appeared to have got the message. Baker forced Wood into the action and Sheridan set up Campbell for a header which Thomas Morgan did well to clear off the line.

However, that response petered out. Indeed, they were fortunate that Trevor Molloy had a terrible miss in the 68th minute, when Ian Gilzean set the youngster clean through.

That had been the visiting side's best chance of the evening, but their ability to mix and match their game enabled them to pose a constant threat throughout. At the back they looked as happy to hoof the ball to Gilzean as to attend to any real craft, but when they did take the trouble to play the ball through midfield their final pass was generally more effective than that of their hosts. Reilly, with his pace and eye for an opportunity, was usually the man giving some Shelbourne defender or other a hard time.

Afterwards Richardson conceded that his men had been beaten by the better team, a conclusion that had been inescapable long before Tony McCarthy had beaten Gilzean to an injury-time through-ball, only to lob his own goalkeeper from the edge of the area.

It summed up Shelbourne's night that by then he was filling in at left full back, a position from which Mick Neville, outstanding throughout, had only recently been withdrawn.

Still nobody, not Neville and presumably not Pascal Vaudequin who sat out the night on the bench, could have saved the home side by then for it was, as Pat Dolan made clear afterwards, a night that simply belonged to the Saints.

"We were superb tonight, we showed all the characteristics that you could ask for. Great attacking and fine defending." These, one suspects, are just the qualities that are steadily moving his ever-more impressive side towards their second championship title in three seasons.

Shelbourne: Gough; Costello, Scully, McCarthy, Neville; Fenlon; Baker, Campbell, Sheridan, Rutherford; S Geoghegan. Subs: Smith for Neville (83 mins), Kelly for Fenlon (89 mins).

St Patrick's: Wood; Burke, Lynch, Hawkins, Long; Morgan, Gormley, Osam; Reilly, Gilzean, Molloy. Subs: Campbell for Molloy (59 mins), Keegan for Gormley (83 mins).

Referee: H Byrne (Dublin).