Was out at it myself, I finally made a match, and I reckon thats a very accurate description. We were the better team in the first half after a shaky start and yeah yer man Kyle was dangerous especially coming down the left wing often having the beating of his man and nearly scored after beating two. Good speed, ball control and was able to recover it more than once after momentarily losing it in a tangle - in other words got stuck in.
We're probably not cute enough though tending to shoot on goal given any chance rather than being more composed. Their second was against the run of play at the end of the first half which was a killer. Keeper parried a shot he probably should've held and they easily scored from the rebound. Third looked like an OG (I went to our attacking end both halves), the ball chipping in over the keeper off defender's foot, in a scrappier second half.
Thought we were poor from set pieces even though Sinnotts deliveries looked decent so maybe more a case of physically getting on the end of them. It got bit handbaggy towards the end, they had a guy sent off, and could see our lads had the passion and were frustrated with themselves gifting two goals like that.
We should've deffo had 2 in first half and had chances for 1 or 2 more. In second most dangerous moves were actually when we were defending a Dundalk free kick and outstretched leg from the end of the wall intercepted the sneaky pass out to the wing, we spotted I thought, and we broke quickly in numbers. We massively outnumbered them with 3 bearing down on them past their last defenders (in line or behind with the ball though). It was called back for offside not much inside their half and I seriously doubt it and certainly the players did, lucky no booking for saying so. Linesman called a few dodgy ones like when Kyle was hugging the touchline but kept marginal balls in.
We got and subsequently wasted a lot of free kicks around the area. They were strong in the air. But a blatant handball block in the area went unpunished when it was as clear a peno as I remember seeing, right in front of me and the linesman who had exact same view (but maybe not the same optician !). Incidently their man got sent off seconds after that, we were really having a got at them at that late stage. A peno would've been too late to change anything anyway but might've shown the scoreline up a bit. It was never a 3-0 match. I'd say a score draw or even us edging it would've been a more accurate reflection of the performances.
Considering Dundalk are top I'd be hopefull of getting results with that kinda performance against lesser teams especially given some decent away results. Can't believe it was Dempsey's debut, it didn't look it. That must be the player people were talking about before the match, I took it to be along the lines of "he won't be playing for the Under 21s then" presumably as he started for the senior side. Unfortunately of the remaining matches I can make the next Dundalk home and away are two. The Cats, Harps, Shelbourne (home + away) are the others.
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