Draw fair result for Pats boss

It had been a 133 day wait, but St Patrick’s Athletic returned to league action last night as they travelled Leeside to collect the first point towards the defence of their title.

A Garry Buckley header for Cork City just before half time was cancelled out by a Christy Fagan header on 57 minutes before the Rebel Army were forced to play the last 24 minutes with ten men following John Dunleavy’s second yellow card.

After the game, Extratime.ie caught up with St Patrick’s Athletic manager Liam Buckley and asked him his thoughts on the result and how he to finally getting going.

“Delighted to get it started, disappointed we didn’t pick up three points – bearing in mind they were down to ten. That said, I thought Cork merited a point out of the game. They defended quite well in the second half, bearing in mind they were down to ten. But overall we’re up and running.”

Perhaps dictated by injuries to Danny Morrissey and Michael Rafter, John Caulfield lined his charges out with only one striker and five in midfield – matching the impressive Saints midfield man for man. Both teams tentatively probed but with the game finely balanced and heading for 0-0 at half time, Buckley popped up at the back post to send the home side into raptures. Buckley told us however that this did not change his half time team talk.

“There wasn’t necessarily a hell of a lot in the first half. I thought they had one or two chances, we had one or two. It was fairly even I just thought we could play better.

“For the first few minutes of the second half we did knock it around better. There’s still some understanding to better and we’re trying to play with a whole group here. We had one or two new players tonight, one or two new one’s came off the bench, so there’s a little bit of gelling them into the whole picture but I can see us getting better over the next few weeks.”

While a point can be seen as a positive outcome from an evenly balanced game, fans of the Inchicore side might be more concerned about the absence of last year’s PFAI Player of the Year Killian Brennan who was initially named in the starting eleven but was withdrawn after the warm up. Buckley assured Extratime.ie that this was only a precaution.

“He had a slight groin issue and he just tweaked it again this evening so we didn’t take a chance.”

Next up for St Patrick’s Athletic is the visit of Ballinamalard for Monday night’s Setanta Sports Cup tie. With such strength and depth in his squad, the St Pats supremo finished our interview by confirming he would shuffle his deck for the tie.

“We’ll freshen up the squad for that.”

Extratime.ie will bring you all the build-up, action and reaction from Monday night’s Setanta Sports Cup tie.