Shamrock Rovers 5 Bray W 2:THE DEFENDING champions got back to winning ways in eventful fashion yesterday and join Sligo Rovers at the top of the table ahead of this week's trip to London – but Bray Wanderers will have left Tallaght wondering what might have been if only they had kept 11 players on the pitch for the duration of this game.

The final scoreline was a fair enough reflection of how comfortable a win it was for the champions overall but the result would have looked fairly far-fetched half an hour in when Wanderers had led and Rovers, for all their possession, were struggling to make anything of the chances they were making.

“We didn’t start particularly well,” admitted Michael O’Neill afterwards. “We went behind, then huffed and puffed for a bit but I did think that we started to play a bit in the last 10 or 15 minutes of the first half.

“The goal (Gary McCabe’s first of the game, in the 44th minute) relieved the pressure a bit and so we enjoyed the second half a bit more but we’ll have to approach Thursday a little differently to the way we approached today.”

The Dubliners should have Craig Sives back by then while Ken Oman also has an outside chance of featuring at White Hart Lane.

This time out, neither was available and so the back four had a slightly makeshift look about it, something that seemed a significant enough factor early on when the visitors were still in a position to pose a serious threat.

Bray’s convincing win over UCD last week, their first in five outings, ensured that they came with renewed confidence after what had been a difficult spell. Early on it showed with the visitors holding their own in midfield, where they had an extra man, and up front, where lone striker Conor Murphy enjoyed a fair bit of support, particularly from the team’s wide men, Dan McGuinness and Jake Kelly.

After 26 minutes they even managed to take the lead, silencing the home support with a cracking volley by Kelly who capitalised on the second uncertain attempt to clear a Gary Dempsey corner from the left.

Having seen their side beaten twice already this season by Devlin’s men, the local supporters might have been forgiven for fearing the worst at that stage but the game turned decisively in their side’s favour not long after when Shane O’Connor, already on a yellow, was reckoned by referee Richie Winter to have elbowed Gary McCabe as they both raced towards the ball, and booked for the second time.

The decision completely changed the balance of the game. Bray suddenly found themselves struggling to contain their hosts in midfield where Rohan Ricketts and, in particular, McCabe, did well. Though space opened up for Ronan Finn and Chris Turner in the centre too neither made quite the impact they would have hoped to in the circumstances but it made little enough difference.

There had always been a slightly seat-of-the-pants aspect to Wanderers’ defending and Darren Quigley had kept Twigg at bay a couple of times by getting off his line very quickly but as the pressure mounted and the Scottish striker repeatedly beat the Wanderers’ offside trap, the equaliser became fairly inevitable.

It came almost on the stroke of half-time when Twigg’s cross from the left was cleared only as far as Finn by Dane Massey. With his first touch the midfielder teed up McCabe who finished confidently from 12 yards.

After that the second half was pretty much one-way traffic and there was never any question about the hosts’ ability to push on and claim the extra points.

As it turned out they had the lead within four minutes with Ricketts getting his first goal for the Dubliners with a free that, like many others, was rather poorly defended by Bray, and McCabe then struck again when, after picking up possession from stand-in centre half Pat Sullivan, he played a neat exchange of passes with Twigg before firing home from the edge of the area.

When his chance came, Finn finished well after racing clear of the Bray defence and Twigg rounded off a good afternoon by heading home the fifth in the 90th minute. The celebrations had barely ended, though, when Bray, almost from their kick off, broke upfield and Kelly grabbed his second goal of the gave to give a measure of consolation to the visitors.

SHAMROCK ROVERS:Brush; McCormack, Sullivan (Dennehy, 72 mins), Murray, Paterson; McCabe (Stevens, 72 mins), Finn, Turner, Ricketts (Sheppard, 78 mins); Twigg, O’Neill.

BRAY WANDERERS: Quigley; S O’Connor, Mitchell, Prendergast, Massey; Dempsey; McGuinness (Webster, 42 mins), Shields (O’Connor, 57 mins), Houston, Kelly; Murphy (Mulroy, 74 mins).

Referee: R Winter (Dublin).