Late winners, missed penalties, controversial sending offs and huge changes to the relegation and promotion battles. Here's our take-aways from week 20 of the Airtricity League.
1) St Pats may just have that "winning mentality" after all
Last season Pats challenged for most of the season but pundits, and indeed their own fans, never truly believed they could actually win the league. That's beginning to change. After an hour of being frustrated by a brilliant goalkeeping performance by Cork City's Mark McNulty, Pats found themselves a goal down against 10 men. They equalised through a great Anto Flood 20-yarder but huffed and puffed until the 92nd minute when referee Padraig Sutton awarded them a penalty. Up stepped the only regular who's won a league Killian Brennan to score his second injury time penalty winner of the season. Call it cliché if you will, but teams that win league do tend to get late winners when they need them.
2) The scoreless draw between Rovers helped neither
After David McMillan had his penalty saved by Richard Brush, Sligo Rovers continued to press for the winner against Shamrock Rovers on Saturday evening without success. It means the champions have won only 3 of their last 13 games and now trail St Pats by 6 points, dropping to 4th place for the first time in 3 years. The Tallaght Rovers have now had scoreless draws in 6 of their 11 away games, leaving them 10 points behind St Pats with a game more played. Recent signing Eamon Zayed remained on the bench until the 82nd minute, despite an injury to Mark Quigley after only 20 minutes of the game that they had to win to have any hope of pushing for a title. Next week sees them travel to Dundalk while Sligo travel to Derry. Both huge games in the race for Europe.
3) Dundalk and Derry lead the chasing pack
Dundalk struggled to beat Bray Wanderers but extended their excellent run and remain in 2nd place. Once again it was the combination of Byrne and Hoban that provided the match winning goal and there isn't a better tandem of young strikers in the country. Derry City recovered from their European disappointment to gain a 1-0 win in Limerick. Derry showed the importance of a deep squad by having top scorer Patterson and new signing McDaid on the bench. It was McDaid who came on to score the winner for Derry as they remain in third place.
4) The relegation battle is ridiculously tight
Shelbourne beat 9-man UCD on Friday night to leap off the bottom of the table for the first time in months. As a sign of how tight things are down there, Shels jumped all the way to 9th place. Bohs failure to beat Drogheda (the game finished 1-1)) leaves them bottom of the table but with only a point separating the bottom 4, they'll all know that every point is vital. Next weekend is huge as Bohs host UCD and Bray host Shels. 2 wins for teams there could even drag Drogheda and Cork back into things too. You get the feeling this is going down to the last game of the season though.
5) Athlone Town now lead the First Division
Long time leaders Longford Town lost at home to Mervue United on Saturday and surrounded the lead to Athlone Town who had earned a point in Waterford the night before. While it's clearly still in Longford's hands with the teams level on points, there's no doubting that momentum is with Athlone. They'll also be buoyed with the news today that manager Roddy Collins has turned down the advances of his former team Bohemians.
Roddy Collins has turned down the chance to take over at Bohemians and remains @AthloneTownFC manager
— Midlands103Sport (@MidlandsSport) July 29, 2013
Of course the biggest news of the week may happen off the field as former manager Stephen Henderson's winding up petition against Waterford United is due in court this morning. With Henderson turning down Waterford's first offer last week, it looks bleak for the Suirsiders but hopefully the case can be settled to leave Henderson content and Waterford United still in the league.
