St Patrick’s Athletic 1 Derry City 1
St Patrick’s Athletic captain Joe Redmond scrapped a late equaliser off a Vladislav Kreida corner to allow a raucous 4,789 crowd to carry plenty of hope into this new League of Ireland season.
Derry City looked the better team until St Pat’s turned the contest into a scrap. There will be plenty more nights like this. By the death, Derry were clinging to the point.
The Derry Journal newspaper caught the Candystripes’ billionaire owner in an understandably euphoric mood after the FAI Cup journeyed north last November. “We’re coming for the league title next,” swore Philip O’Doherty. It made a headline that will follow Ruaidhrí Higgins’ team down to Dublin, Cork and up the east coast to Drogheda and Dundalk in the coming nine months.
On the evidence of the opening night, O’Doherty’s desire to end a 26 year wait will not weigh too heavily upon Derry’s deep squad. Even with their best player Michael Duffy injured in the warm-up, Higgins simply replaced the attacking midfielder with a player that arguably possesses a higher ceiling.
Ollie O’Neill, the Ireland under-21 midfielder, famous for the screamer that beat Sweden in 2021, only arrived this week on loan from Fulham, but he instantly looked comfortable at League of Ireland standard.
There was his delightful through ball for Ryan Graydon to be denied an early goal by David Odumosu’s trailing glove before the goalkeeper gifted O’Neill an open net, only for the 20 year old’s chip to be cleared off the line by Redmond.
When O’Neill made way on the hour mark, a similar calibre of player arrived in Patrick McEleney. This squad is built to deny Shamrock Rovers a fourth successive title. St Pat’s will have plenty to say about that too.
Lots of people clearly missed these nights. Inchicore regulars sounded like they had not cleared their throats all winter. Same goes for Tim Clancy, as the young manager found plenty wrong with referee Robert Harvey’s early instincts. The full house was up in arms when Chris Forrester became the second name cautioned, following Clancy, despite a spate of bookable fouls by the visitors.
The second loudest cheer of the match came when Harvey finally brandished yellow for Will Patching second foul in seconds.
Some things will never change, like Chris Forrester’s mesmerising touch to create his own shot to resist Derry’s early running. The visitors did not seek to control possession, merely punish St Pat’s defence with a targeted press, which should have yielded two goals before Jordan McEneff’s breakthrough on 31 minutes.
The opening goal came with the run of play, after Redmond miscued horribly for Patching to find McEneff who used his body to stay goal side of Kreida, daring the Estonian midfielder to give up a penalty, before slicing it beyond Odumosu.
The 22 year old’s six years at Arsenal were blighted by injury, so his delight was unmistakable when he remembered to run towards the Derry fans behind the goal.
This, as you can imagine, got the juices flowing around Dublin 8. Sam Curtis is evolving into the sort of fullback that is destined to be signed by an English club before the year ends. Unfortunately Curtis’ fellow 17 year old, Adam Murphy missed the season opener through injury.
But Clancy had other tricks up his sleeve with Jake Mulraney, back from a stint at Orlando City, coming off the bench on the hour. Derry’s defensive structure appeared too solid to allow anything other than Jamie Lennon’s speculative effort to skim over the crossbar but perseverance is a valuable weapon as Redmond shrugged off a difficult 89 minutes to save a point.
St Patrick’s Athletic: Odumosu; Grivosti, Lewis, Redmond, Breslin; Kreida, Lennon, Forrester, Curtis; Lonergan, M Doyle. Subs: Mulraney for M Doyle (53), Atakayi for Grivosti (66), Carty for Lonergan, E Doyle for Forrester (both 74).
Derry City: Mahere; Coll, Connolly, McJannet, S McEleney; O’Neill, Patching, Graydon, McEneff, O’Reilly; McGonigle. Subs: Boyce for McJannet (44), P McEleney for O’Neill (60), C Kavanagh for J McEneff, B Kavanagh for McGonigle (both 70).
Referee: Robert Harvey.
