It's scarcely the most obvious thing to take consolation from, but when Don O'Riordan and his young Galway United players reflect on why they lost last night's Harp Lager FAI Cup semi-final at Terryland Park they might do worse than to conclude, quite simply, that they were beaten by the better side.

Still on course for the double, the first half of which should now be completed on Tuesday night when Drogheda United come to Tolka Park, Shelbourne had the course of this game dictated to them by a fiercely determined Galway side. By any of the usual measures - most notably possession or attempts on goal - Galway actually had the better of it, but in terms of both defensive errors and chances taken, they came out the wrong side of Shelbourne, who won the games with second-half goals from James Keddy and Dessie Baker.

O'Riordan categorised the mistakes that led to the goals as being of the "schoolboy" variety. "We learned as soon as we came up that if you make those sort of errors against teams of Shelbourne's calibre you get punished, it's just disappointing that we slipped back into it again tonight," he said.

For Dermot Keely, there is the satisfaction of knowing that his team is now on the brink of achieving the first double since Derry City's in 1989.

"You have to go all the way back to June to when our season started," he said afterwards. "Since then we've played about 38 games and now we know that we can win a league and a cup by winning just two more."

Keely ran through the bulk of the team when asked to identify those who had performed particularly well, but he conceded that his side had been put on the back foot early on with Galway edging the first half.

If Shelbourne's intention early on had been to get the ball and play it about, they weren't long finding out that United planned to deny them the time and opportunity to consider their next move.

With the home side's midfield chasing everything from the outset and Michael Donnellan posing a physical threat to Shelbourne's big central defensive partnership, the Dubliners were constantly on edge, a fact reflected by the fact that Eddie Hickey went untroubled through the whole of then first period.

Once or twice, the Bakers and Stephen Geoghegan got in amongst the localmen inside their box, but having hit their best run of goalscoring all season, the closest the visitors came to hitting the target was after 30 minutes and then it was a Brendan O'Connor backpass that almost caught the goalkeeper in no man's land.

At the other end, a 12-yard Donnellan header just before the break came much closer and when the half-time whistle blew, the United players can hardly have suspected that the bulk of the second half was to prove a frustrating game of catch-up.

Their troubles began within a couple of minutes of the re-start with Owen Heary's long, diagonal cross taking a bad bounce on the way to Keddy, who pushed the ball back across the goalmouth and inside the right-hand post. It was the former UCD winger's fourth goal in as many games, but it was a blow that O'Riordan's side might have survived. They certainly set about retrieving the situation determinedly enough and at one stage it took an outstanding recovery tackle by Tony McCarthy to prevent Eric Lavine getting directly in on Williams.

Indeed, the sight of so many desperately-hoofed clearances by the likes of McCarthy, Pat Scully and Paul Doolin must have encouraged the young United players, who were already gambling by pushing further forward.

For that they paid just after the hour when Scott Morgan's legs deserted him while chasing a crossfield ball. The full-back was then caught out of position by Richie Baker's quick through ball into the path of his brother Dessie, who placed his shot poorly, but hit it with enough power to beat Hickey anyway.

The dejection of the local players as the ball was picked out of the net was obvious, their misery matched only by that of the large band of supporters who had turned out to spur them on.

Fans and team alike did their best to put on a show after that and O'Riordan played what cards he had left to him by introducing Billy Clery, Sean Malee and Neil Ogden, but the game was gone.

With two minutes remaining, Clery cracked the underside of the crossbar with a fine volley from 20 yards out. Yet that was as near as anything came to going right for United over the closing stages when, on a couple of occasions, the margin of defeat might easily have been widened.

GALWAY UNITED: Hickey; Neary, Foley, O'Connor, Morgan; Keogh, Dolan, Sheridan, Gorman; Lavine, Donnellan. Subs: Clery for Donnellan (65 mins), Ogden and Malee for Neary and Gorman (68 mins).

SHELBOURNE: Williams; Heary, Scully, McCarthy, Hutchison; R Baker, Doolin, Fenlon, Keddy; D Baker, S Geoghegan.

Referee: J McDermott (Dublin).