St Pat’s are ‘not making it easy for ourselves, that’s for sure’

St Patrick’s Athletic have continued their unbeaten run in Europe with a scrappy but deserved 1-0 win in Inchicore last Thursday evening.

St Pat’s have as of recent been in good goalscoring form following wins against Hegelmann and UCC where they notched ten goals in two games.

Eight admittedly coming against lesser opposition in UCC.

Regardless, for much of their match last week against Estonian side Kalju it looked like they could potentially slide back into the previous form which has plagued their domestic season and at one stage saw them score just twice in seven league matches.

Throughout the game the Pat’s defence had very little to do. Joe Redmond and Co were very rarely called upon with Joseph Anang in goal being essentially a spectator.

The other end of the pitch saw a little more action with Simon Power and Jake Mulraney both having their efforts saved by Kalju goalkeeper Pavlov.

It wouldn’t be until the second half where Pat’s would really take control of the game. Red cards are rare enough in football but to see two for the same team is almost unheard of.

Kalju would go down to nine men halfway through the second half and would find themselves on the receiving end of waves of pressure from St Pats.

Mason Melia came close in the 71st minute but fired wide a chance that he really should have put away.

Aidan Keena came close shortly after with the Kalju keeper coming to the rescue once again. Still they would not be able to hold out forever and it would be the 90th minute before finally the deadlock was broken.

Played through by Brandon Kavanagh, Conor Carty’s shot was once again saved by Pavlov but after a stellar performance in goal, was unable to save Chris Forrester’s rebound.

Forrester showed brilliant skill to take a touch, protect the ball from incoming defenders and tap it home into the back of the net.

Speaking after the game manager Stephen Kenny was slightly frustrated they had not won by more.

“We’re not making it easy for ourselves, that’s for sure, but thankfully we got the goal we needed.

‘We are frustrated but if you’d said a one-nil win at the start of the game that would have constituted a good result so we have to not reflect and beat ourselves up about that, we look to improve in the areas we could have scored but all the players gave everything, showed a good attitude, we have to bring that in to next week.

Kenny also commented on the recent upswing in form.

“We have scored a few in the last couple of weeks so we have gone beyond that [goal drought], we scored again on Thursday, got a hatful on Sunday, got two in Lithuania, which is great to get in a European game and we scored here, so we just have to keep improving and make sure we finish the job in Estonia next week,”.