St Patrick's fail to convert chances

AIRTRICITY LEAGUE PREMIER DIVISION: St Patrick's Athletic 0 Cork City 0:THEY COULDN'T quite close the gap at the top of the table in the way they would have hoped ahead of Sligo Rovers' game today but St Patrick's Athletic did extend their unbeaten start to the season to 11 games with this lively scoreless draw at Richmond Park last night.

Given the number of chances they created over the 90 minutes they’ll wonder quite how they didn’t win it but when they reflect on the ones they presented to Cork City over the last half an hour, they might consider themselves a little lucky they didn’t lose too.

Having found a bit of form before coming here themselves, City will certainly be disappointed that Tadgh Purcell didn’t make a better fist of his penalty in the closing stages to grab all three points.

On balance, though, the draw was a fair result and the Dubliners, in particular, can take some satisfaction from their start to the campaign, having taken 21 points, three more than last year, from their first 11 outings.

The game started evenly but, not for the first time under Liam Buckley, the home side showed an impressive capacity early on to dictate the terms on which it was going to be played.

Cork, meanwhile, had their moments too but at that stage they tended to be rather more snatched as when Conor Kenna’s slip up allowed Shane Horgan to feed Purcell and his low, curling shot forced Brendan Clarke into his only real save of the opening half.

For long stretches, though, they managed to pull it off well enough with Mark McNulty taking a booking for a challenge out towards the corner flag on Christy Fagan after Danny Murphy had been beaten at one point but almost all of the locals’ other early chances being struck from distance and usually by Chris Forrester, who went close three times in the opening 45 minutes,

Forrester was bang on target with a close-range header soon after the break but this time Purcell kept the ball out without really knowing anything about it as the ball fired off the back of his head.

Not long afterwards, though, City really began to find their stride and, with Buckley’s men suddenly finding it more difficult to work the ball forward when put under pressure, the game developed into a remarkably open, end-to-end affair.

Purcell hit the crossbar from distance before both goalkeepers took centre stage. McNulty made a couple of fine saves, most memorably when he stood up well to Forrester a quarter of an hour from the end, but Clarke went one better a few minutes later when he saved Purcell’s poor spot-kick after the striker had been brought down by Kenny Browne.

It was, by this stage, fairly enthralling stuff. Vinny Sullivan and Seán O’Connor both fired wide when they each should have hit the target and Cork added to the entertainment value by hosting a prolonged goalmouth scramble.

Neither side could produce the big finish, though, and both sets of fans left with reasons to be both cheerful and cheesed off.

ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC: Clarke; O'Brien, Browne, Kenna, Bermingham; Russell, Flynn, Forrester; J Kelly (O'Connor, 63 mins), Fagan (Daly, 72 mins), Meenan (Carroll, 83 mins).

CORK CITY: McNulty; Healy, Dunleavy, Spillane, D Murphy; Horgan, Morrissey, Duggan, O'Neill; Sullivan, Purcell.

Referee: P McLaughlin(Monaghan).