St Patrick's Athletic 2 Finn Harps 0: The sight of Kevin McHugh doing some light jogging during the pre-match warm-up at Richmond Park last night must have raised spirits among the small band of Finn Harps supporters who arrived to see an open but ultimately pretty ordinary game.

As it turned out, though, last year's top scorer is at least another week away from being fully fit again and in his continuing absence the first division champions again found goals hard to come by at the higher level.

Felix Healy's men were a distant second best in the first half and even when obliged to chase the game in the second after Gerard Rowe's fine chipped goal a minute on from the break, they had little to offer up front. Paddy McGrenaghan's darting run from the left side of midfield, and firm strike straight at Barry Ryan, was as close as they came to mustering an equaliser while the game hung in the balance. Their hopes of salvaging anything from the trip were finally killed off three minutes from time when Colm Foley rose unchallenged to head a long, looping Keith Fahey corner home from eight yards out.

Their opponents might wonder quite how they didn't win a little more easily given the amount of possession their midfield and forwards enjoyed. After seeing his side take solitary points from a couple of games he felt they should have won. However, John McDonnell will have been encouraged by a great deal of what was produced, particularly in the second half when, despite having to guard against squandering their lead, Colm Foley, Rowe and Robbie Doyle all came close to adding to the Dubliners' haul.

The home side, indeed, made most of the running from the start with Keith Dunne, Fahey and Michael Foley all looking to join Doyle and Rowe in getting forward. The approach work repeatedly involved the strikers looking to turn the Harps back four with flicks into space.

But as the opening half wore on the visitors began to make life increasingly difficult for themselves by dropping their entire midfield back to the edge of the area and leaving themselves with little by way of an outlet for moving the ball forward.

They still got by comfortably for long spells with Gavin Cullen rarely tested in the first half. He should have been, not least when Doyle found Rowe in space through the centre 20 minutes in and the former Shelbourne striker cut inside only to hit a weak shot towards the bottom corner which the goalkeeper stopped easily.

There were a string of other equally poor attempts on goal and so it was from set-pieces, where Darragh Maguire posed the home side's most persistent threat, that they went closest in the first half with the central defender climbing well above his marker on a couple of occasions, only to see his first effort fly narrowly over the angle and his other come crashing back off the crossbar.

For all their superiority, though, McDonnell's men might actually have trailed at the break had Chris Breen shown a little more composure when put through on goal a little short of the half hour.

Ross Connolly's touch to set the chance up was perfectly judged, but his fellow striker took a couple of poor touches when a first-time shot might have been more advisable. McHugh might have done better. Somebody, one suspects, will have to if it not to be a long and difficult campaign for them.

St Patrick's Athletic: Ryan; Donnelly, C Foley, Maguire, Bell (Quigley, 92 mins); Dunne, Fahey, Caffrey, M Foley (O'Keeffe, 78 mins); Doyle, Rowe.

Finn Harps: Cullen; Asokuh, Boyle, Bradley (McGrenaghan, 58 mins), Minnock; Rossiter, Funston, Gorman, Bonner (Brown, 69 mins); Breen, Connolly (McGowan, 58 mins).

Referee: J O'Neill (Waterford).