match report

thecorner · 12/04/2005, 3:18 AM

from setanta.com

Portadown 1-1 Cork City. P. Kelly '77. C. Doyle '63.
Portadown and Cork City shared the points in their Setanta Cup Group 2 clash at Shamrock Park, a result that will please Pat Fenlon and Shelbourne more than Ronnie McFall or Damien Richardson.
Cork lead the group on four points from two games, but Cork boss Richardson knows that it could have been so much better, and that a second group match win would have put the pressure on Shels ahead of their match with Portadown in two week's time.
Portadown 'keeper Paul Murphy twice looked shaky when dealing with successive long balls from Cork's dead-ball specialist George O'Callaghan on the quarter-hour mark, as the visitors opened brightly.
Cork seemed to be marginally more comfortable on the ball as the half progressed, despite a subtle performance from the home side's playmaker Michael Collins.
The 27-year-old, tipped for a full international cap last week by manager McFall, did produce one sublime moment of skill in the opening period to set up Marc McCann down the left channel. However, there was no red shirt in the six-yard box to get on the end of the Portadown forward's deep cross.
Kevin Doyle then had a sight of goal on the 23rd minute for the visitors when he spirited away from Cullen Feeney in the box, but volleyed over O'Callaghan's inch-perfect cross from the right touch-line.
Former Cork manager Pat Dolan, a man who has never knowingly undersold himself, his charges, or Irish football in general, had invoked Aristotle in his pre-match eulogy of O'Callaghan.
The 25-year-old's performance was certainly peripatetic, as he drifted across the midfield in order to try to influence proceedings. However, his frustration as the game wore on became more apparent, as seemingly well-crafted long balls dropped metres from a green shirt. Like Eric Morecambe being conducted by Andre Previn, O'Callaghan was playing all the right notes. Just not necessarily in the right order.
Nonetheless, Cork were still the side most likely to break the deadlock, and three minutes after the restart, Murphy made amends for his early shakiness with a fine save down low to his right to deny Denis Behan, after Kevin Doyle had flicked on Michael Devine's long goal-kick.
However, Cork finally netted the goal their territorial domination deserved on 63 minutes, when Doyle finished coolly past Murphy from the left channel after a superb reverse pass from midfielder Colin O'Brien scalpelled open the Portadown defence.
Yet Portadown levelled 14 minutes later through the simplest of set pieces. The Cork City defence cleared Collins' speculative free-kick from the edge of the box, but from the resulting corner, Darren Kelly wrestled Alan Bennett out of the way to head home at the far post.