Ten-man Utd start the new campaign on a losing note

Date Published: {J}

St. Patrick’s Athletic 2

Galway United 0

Keith Kelly

GALWAY United’s season got off to a nightmare start in Richmond Park on Friday night, as Sean Connor’s new-look side conceded in either half and finished the game with ten men as Stephen O’Donnell’s competitive debut for his home town club was cut short after just 17 minutes.

The visitors can have little complaint about Friday’s result, or the sending off, but there is certainly no need for alarm bells as United more than matched their hosts at times, and the outcome could have been different had United kept their full complement on the pitch.

United opened their league campaign at the same ground last year and cruised to a comfortable 3-0 win, but it was a vastly different maroon-clad team that started on Friday night, Connor handing competitive debuts to seven players.

Barry Ryan, Seamus Conneely, Derek O’Brien and Jason Molloy were the only survivors from 2009 to start on Friday night, and it will take this new-look side some time to gel as a unit. But despite the loss, there were some positives to be taken from Friday’s game.

Gary Curran and Ciaran Foley each put in a good shift in midfield, especially considering the extra workload they had to shoulder following O’Donnell’s dismissal, while up front Karl Sheppard looks like he has some goals in him.

Cian McBrien also impressed when introduced midway through the second half, and with Bobby Ryan to be available for this Friday’s game with Bray, having missed the game against his former side through suspension, United have an ideal opportunity to put Friday’s defeat out of their mind.

“I thought Sheppard was tremendous tonight, he worked really hard. We haven’t got the ideal partner for Karl at the moment, and we have got to get used to playing with each other as well. We’ve a new team and preseason has been difficult, with putting a squad together and training here and training there.

“There were lots of positives for us out there tonight, you watched the game I thought we passed the ball better than they did tonight,” Connor said after the game, though Pats manager Pete Mahon offered a different opinion on that last point, saying “I don’t know what match Sean was watching if he thought that his team passed the ball, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt”.

The truth was probably somewhere in between – Pats went off the boil after that early goal, and United were the better team in the first half. But, as the game wore on, tiredness took its toll on the visitors and Pats sprayed the ball across the pitch, stretching United and there was only one team who looked like scoring in the second period, which they did 20 minutes from time.

It was all Pats in the opening stages, with Stuart Byrne directing a header straight at Barry Ryan, while Alex Williams somehow fired over from four yards after being teed up by Ryan Guy, and their pressure finally paid off in the eighth minute.

The home side won a throw-in down the left, and Gareth Coghlan clipped a ball into the box to no-one in particular. Thomas Heary attempted to drive the ball down the pitch, but it clattered off Curran and into the path of Stuart Byrne, who played in Ryan Guy down the left channel.

Guy took a touch before smashing a powerful shot high into the roof of the net inside Barry Ryan’s near post, the ‘keeper getting a hand to it but unable to keep it out as the American scored the first goal of the new Premier Division season.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel