High-flying Dundalk go 10 points clear

Dundalk 4 St Patrick’s Athletic 1: Dundalk took a massive step towards retaining the league title by moving 10 points clear at the top of the table following a demolition job on St Patrick’s Athletic at Oriel Park last night. 

Stephen Kenny’s side showed just why they are champions with a scintillating first-half display that brought the visitors nine match winning run crashing to an end. With Shamrock Rovers beating second placed Cork City 3-0 in Tallaght earlier in the evening, it means the Louth men take a huge lead into the final eight matches of the campaign.

Dundalk hit the front after just six minutes when Brian Gartland headed home a Daryl Horgan corner and they had doubled their advantage by the 12th minute when Ronan Finn set McMillan away to slot past Brendan Clarke.

It was 3-0 20 minutes later when Horgan laid the ball off to McMillan on the left before the striker fired a left-foot shot under the goalkeeper.

Pat’s did pull a goal back in the 38th minute when James Chambers fired a free to the bottom right hand corner of the net but Dundalk restored their three goal lead three minutes later when Horgan tapped home from Finn’s cross.

Liam Buckley’s side did improve in the second-half but a fine save from Gary Rogers to turn a Chambers free around the post midway through the half killed any hopes they had of a revival.

By that stage the job was pretty much done for Dundalk and it’ll surely take a collapse of Devon Loch proportions for them not to lift the title come the end of October.

Dundalk:

Rogers; Gannon, Gartland, Boyle, Massey; Mountney, O’Donnell, Towell, Horgan( Meenan 90); Finn (Shields 58); McMillan (Maguire 85).

St Patrick’s Athletic:

Clarke; McEleney, Hoare, Desmond, Bermingham; Byrne, Greene, Bolger (McGuinness HT), Chambers, Forrester; McGrath (Markey 67).

Referee:

D McKeon (Dublin).