FAI Cup Quarter Final Galway United 1 St Patrick's Athletic 0

Don started with Paul Thornton and Luthar Watson up front, a strange pairing in many eyes, but it proved to be a key decision, as Thornton harried the Pats defence, running himself into the ground. This along with Uniteds midfield employing similar tactics, and assisted by Pat's loss through injury of Gormely, saw a scrappy first half, where Pats while on top, never totally got a hold of the game. It was obvious in the early stages too that United especially felt the nerves of the occasion... as many a silly error was made - Ian Rossitter got a roasting for the first twenty minutes, and some feared the worst, but he got on top, and for the last 70 minutes put in a superb performance.

Seeing Ian Gilzean and Trevor Molloy being substituted gave one an insight as to how successful Uniteds early tactics were.

This changed in the second half... O'Riordan must have given a mighty team talk :-), as United took the game to Pats, Fran Carter leading the way with one marvellous run from his own penalty box, down the middle of the park, before getting a shot which Woods saved. This can only have lifted the team, and for the next few minutes, United attacked Pats with vigour, and Eric Levine made the breakthrough 12 minutes after he came on for Thornton.

Mike Quirke, who got the man of the match award from the press, floated over a sublime cross which Daragh Sheridan won, and Eric pounced on the breaking ball, to stick it in the net beyond Woods grasp. Cue absolute mayhem and unrestrained joy on the Terryland terraces.

United weathered the Pats attempt to come back, and the referee payed 5 minutes of injury time but Mark Cobey rescued United with another top class save near the end, and the result was to be 1-0 to the tribesmen.

Celebrations of a sort not seen in Terryland in a long time, saw a massive pitch invasion, and the team returned from the dressing rooms for their encore, before the partying began in Breezers and Bogarts for the night!

United's defence was the key on the night, with man of the match Quirke (defensively as good as the rest, but I reckon his cross for the goal swung the decision), Clery , Carter and Rossiter (after the opening 20 mins) played as well as you could dream for. Luthar Watson seemed to be the player though who instilled fear into the Pats defence who seemed to be wary of his height and pace. Eric made the difference when it counted in the 2nd period. However it must be noted that this was a below par performance from Pats, although credit to Don O'Riordan for ensuring United's tactics on the night were the root cause of a lot of this.

On an aside, Don was warned as to his future conduct by the League during the week, but at half time, Stephen McGuinness and O'Riordan had to be seperated by the ref and the linesman as the players left the field. Hopefully he'll not get mentionned in the ref's report. Hopefully too the incident where the linesman got hit by an object thrown from the terraces, will not lead to trouble for the club (although it seemed to come form the Pats section).

Anyhow it's not good to finish on a sour note, on one of the biggest days of recent times for United... the Cup Semi-finals beckon... Sligo anyone?

Alan