Waterford United v Shelbourne

SSE Airtricity League – First Division

RSC – Fri, May 9th – KO 7.45pm

Waterford is the next ‘Port of Call’ for Shelbourne, as they take on the local United in Division One of the SSE Airtricity League on Friday night. Kick-Off at the RSC is scheduled for 7.45pm.

Shelbourne had a great win on Friday night last, defeating many people’s pre-season favourites for the league, Longford Town, by 3-1 (Shels Scorers Darren Tinnelly, Gareth Coughlan & Dylan Connolly), bringing their points total to 20 from 9 games. Wexford, who inflicted Shelbourne’s one defeat so far in this season’s competition, are in second place on 16 points.

Waterford United, who have had an eventful week, travelled to the other pre-season favourites, Galway FC. at the week-end and came away pointless, going down by two goals to nil, and are currently three from bottom of the table on 11 points.

Earlier on this season, the Suir-siders came to Tolka Park and drew 3-3, courtesy of an unfortunate own goal, in the 93^rd minute – in off the head of Lee Murtagh. That was the first time that the sides had met since October 2011, when the ‘Blues’ defeated the ‘Reds’ 1-0 at the RSC bringing the record for three season to that date to three wins for Waterford to six for Shelbourne.

After the Longford game, a happy Shelbourne manager Johnny McDonnell spoke about the game “We were happy with the way we started, with a great attitude and great energy. We gave away a bad goal after about 20 minutes, but we didn’t panic. Darren scored a great goal before half-time. We came in at the break, talked and sorted out a few ‘housekeeping’ rules. We said to just keep going – we had a game plan coming into the game – a couple of different ways we wanted to play – and it worked for us.“

On the Waterford game and the league position, McDonnell said “There’s a long way to go. We’re not looking at the league table. We’ll just go a game at a time. We only play it one way – we’re not afraid to take it down and pass it. If we lose the ball, we go and get it back.”

Shelbourne go into Friday’s game with no suspensions.

Doubtful and unlikely to start on Friday are John Sullivan, Jordan Keegan and Willo McDonagh. Conor Murphy – even though he came on for the final 20 minutes against Longford – is still classified as ‘doubtful’.

It was good to see Robbie Gaul return to action against Longford last Friday. He came on for the final five minutes, having not played at all this season, after a bad injury sustained in a Universities competition pre-season.

Suspended: None

Injured: None

Doubtful: John Sullivan, Jordan Keegan, Willo McDonagh, Conor Murphy

Goal Scorers (Competitive 2014)

Dylan Connolly – 5

Darren Tinnelly – 3 (EASC 2)

Gareth Coughlan – 2

Philip Hand – 1

Jordan Keegan -1

Conor Murphy -1

Stephen McDonnell -1

Brian Gannon – 1

Keith Quinn – 1

Lee Murtagh – 1