Shelbourne 2-1 Longford Town
Jason Byrne bagged a brace against a dogged Longford Town side to help Shelbourne remain top of the Premier Division table at Tolka Park on Friday night, September 19.
Shelbourne are now four points clear of second placed St Patrick’s Athletic, and also have two games in hand. However, they were made work hard for this victory by a well-organised Longford outfit.
Eric Lavine looked to have given them the lead after 15 minutes, but his goal was disallowed for a foul on Shelbourne goalkeeper Steve Williams. However, three minutes later Longford were a goal down.
A dangerous Owen Heary cross caused all sorts of trouble in the Longford box, and Byrne capitalised to fire through Phillip Keogh’s legs and past the unsighted Stephen O’Brien.
The visitors battled back though and were level just over ten minutes later, when Lavine scored with a sublime chip from an almost impossible angle. The Longford striker had the ball in the net again in the 38th minute but it was ruled out for offside.
The second-half was a closely fought affair but Shelbourne were gifted an equaliser when Brian McGovern made a needless challenge – inside the box – on Jamie Harris just before the hour.
Byrne slotted home the resulting penalty, and Shelbourne looked comfortable for the remainder of the game.
Longford Ollie Byrned Out more like, given the standard of the officials in the game.... Dubious penalty (at the very least inconsistency - if he's giving them for that we should've had two or three ourselves), Dubious offside for the Lavine "goal" mentioned, and generally giving us fook all all night....
22/09/2003, 3:20 PM
Slash/ED
Yet somehow the ref managed to give Shels seven yellow cards on a night where the match was anything but dirty. I didn't get a good angle of the penalty but those who did say it was the correct decision, and both disallowed goals looked like the right decision to me.
Good preformance by Shels I thought, not amazing but not bad either.
22/09/2003, 3:39 PM
Macy
Arguably, two of those yellows could have been red considering they are pretty much last men..... I thought the ref was pathetic, and if that was peno how many would we see everyweek? No consistency even in the same game.... Lavine looked onside for me, when the ball was played (but hey when has that ever been taken into account in the eL)....
However, I thought the crowd was absolutely pathetic..... Stand maybe just over half full, 75ish on the riverside, 200 max in the new stand.....
22/09/2003, 4:15 PM
Slash/ED
The refs are a problem alright, but it's the same for everyone. It all evens out in the end as the old cliché goes.
There was more then 200 in the main stand I thought, the Riverside was as empty as always but the Drumcondra end looked fairly full to me.
