Bohemians 0 Dundalk 2 If the champions seem to like life on the road just now then they must positively cherish these visits to the capital.
To date this season, Stephen Kenny’s side have outscored their various hosts by roughly 10 goals to one in the league but when it comes to Dublin this win, after the recent ones in Inchicore and Tallaght, made it eight scored without reply.
All three points
The players put it down to opponents having the temerity to target all three points against them when playing on their own turf. Bohemians were certainly made to pay for that folly.
Maintaining his rich vein of recent form, Daryl Horgan got the goals that decided it here and much as they did last week against Shamrock Rovers, the champions more or less coasted through the closing stages secure in the knowledge that they would, yet again, be heading for home having taken all three points.
On the face of it, this had always looked an unpromising occasion for Bohemians to recover some of the momentum knocked, so unceremoniously, out of them when Rovers came here a couple of weeks ago but then it was honours even between the Dalymount outfit and Dundalk last season with a win, draw and defeat apiece, something no other team could say.
It started scrappily enough but the energy of the hosts caused their visitors persistent problems even if Bohemians struggled to match their generally impressive play through the first two thirds of the pitch with any sort of quality end product in the last one.
Kurtis Byrne had half a chance to give Bohemians something to show for their early enterprise against his old club but his shot, after a Paddy Kavanagh break had initially fizzled out, was weak and easy for Gary Rogers.
The goalkeeper had to do rather better, though, when Lorcan Fitzgerald whipped in a corner from the right and either Derek Prendergast or Brian Gartland turned it goalwards with the Dundalk defender, it seemed, perhaps getting the final touch.
It was to be late in the game, when substitutes Jake Kelly and Mark Quigley combined at a corner, before the Dubliners came seriously close to scoring again.
Heading home
In the meantime, the champions rather ruthlessly took their chances with Horgan coolly finding the top right corner for the first with a free from outside the area after Dave Mulcahy had bundled Ronan Finn to the ground eight minutes before the break then heading home the second from close range 13 minutes after it.
Before the first, Finn had made it abundantly clear he wanted the defender to be shown a red card and Mulcahy was the last man alright but the sense of grievance dissolved somewhat after the free had been fired beyond Dean Delaney’s outstretched arm.
Bohemians weren’t quite at the races for the second half with Horgan neatly sidestepping Derek Pender down the left-hand side of the box before crossing for John Mountney whose own attempt to head home came back across the face of goal to the winger.
There were two defenders on the line but Horgan reacted more quickly than either of them although even then his header appeared to take a deflection off a Bohemians player before reaching the net.
Two goals down to a better team, the hosts stuck at it gamely enough through the closing half hour of the encounter but rarely did enough to trouble the title holders. BOHEMIANS: Delany; Pender, Prendergast, Mulcahy, Fitzgerald; Lopes (Kelly, 73), Byrne (Murphy, 83); Kavanagh (Quigley, 73), Buckley, Ben Mohamed; Byrne. DUNDALK: Rogers; Gannon, Gartland, Lopes, Massey; Shields, Benson (Barrett, 85); Meenan (Mountney, 62), Finn, Horgan; McMillan (M O'Connor,89). Referee: R Harvey (Dublin).
