St Patrick's still winning pitch battles

ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC - 1 SHAMROCK ROVERS - 0 Their chances of pipping Shelbourne for the title, or even playing in Europe, will still end up being decided by league officials, the lawyers and perhaps the High Court, but nobody - well all right then, maybe Ollie Byrne - can deny the tenacity with which this St Patrick's Athletic team continues to scrap for this championship on the field.

Regular visitors to Inchicore this season won't have been surprised by last night's successful formula. A dogged fight with no let-up from beginning to end and a winning goal produced by a combination of Martin Russell's knack for near-perfect set-pieces and a team-mate's admirable determination to be first to the ball.

On this occasion, the man in question was Darragh Maguire and it was his goal two minutes into first-half injury-time that earned his side their three points and kept the St Patrick's Athletic show on the road.

With both teams having so much to play for, it might have been tight and edgy, but instead we were treated to a fast and open game in which the hosts had, through the first half, just about the better of it.

On several occasions, the speed of the home side's moves into the Rovers half could well have yielded an opening goal, but the crosses were invariably poor with Mbabazi and Ger McCarthy the most memorable offenders.

Instead, the best scoring chances came, as they so often do at Richmond Park, from set-pieces with Russell's corners enabling Darragh Maguire to force Tony O'Dowd into a quick reaction stop at his right-hand post with a header from four or five yards out and Paul Osam to head over from a similar distance.

For Rovers, Billy Woods produced the best chance early with a low driven shot that Séamus Kelly did well to push away, but, moments later, Paul Marney had a similar opportunity at the other end when he seemed to hurry his final shot and make it easy for the goalkeeper.

In first-half injury-time, though, the breakthrough came with a Russell free-kick this time the source of the problem for the visitors. His long curling free from wide was perfectly weighted for a group of his team-mates who were arriving late at the far post and Maguire, who headed the queue, turned the ball firmly past O'Dowd with a shot that this time gave the goalkeeper no chance whatsoever.

It was a blow that Rovers were never to fully recover from. Damien Richardson's side did manage to engineer a couple of decent shooting opportunities over the course of the second half and Marc Kenny and Tony Grant did go close.

But it was Dolan's men who continued to edge it, even though the game became more scrappy - the result of some clumsy fouls and at least one moment of more genuine nastiness.

With 11 minutes remaining, the visitors passed up a golden opportunity to snatch a draw when Pat Deans's shot was parried by Kelly and Shane Robinson scooped the follow way over the bar.

Moments later they were almost put away by Osam whose goal was disallowed for offside. It stayed 1-0, but St Patrick's had already done enough to shade it, even if the celebrations were quickly dampened by the news filtering through from the league.

ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC: Kelly; Croly, Foley, Maguire, Burke; Marney, Osam, Griffin, Russell; Mbabazi (Kelly, 79 mins), McCarthy.

SHAMROCK ROVERS: O'Dowd; Costello (S Grant 87 mins), Palmer, Deans, Byrne; Kenny (Robinson, 71 mins), Colwell, Tracey, Woods; Francis, T Grant.

Referee: H Byrne (Dublin).