Graham Cummins: St Pat’s are no longer a soft touch — they are contenders
St Patrick's Athletic's Mattie Smith celebrates scoring a goal against Finn Harps with teammates. Picture: INPHO/Evan Logan
I’ve always considered St Patrick’s Athletic to be soft. A side that played some nice football but as an opposition player, you always knew that if you weathered the storm, Pat’s would eventually crumble. I thought they were pretenders. They would spend a vast amount of money on recruiting big-name players, which gathered hype and excitement around the club. But invariably their season would be over by July and they were never in the mix when it came to the latter stages of the FAI Cup or contesting for the league.
Pat’s have been one of the bigger spenders in the league in recent years but since 2016 their highest finish has been fifth. In 2018, they finished 37 points off champions Dundalk, in 2019 it was 34 points, and even with only 18 games last year, Pat’s still managed to finish 27 points behind Shamrock Rovers.
When I rejoined Cork City in 2018, Pat’s were the best team I played against. Yet we were confident of beating them because we felt there was a softness to them. A team happy to do the nice side of the game — looking good in possession, players attacking from everywhere — but when it came to the ugly stuff, and players putting their body on the line, they would go missing.
Supporters want a team they can be proud of and I don’t think Pat’s fans can say they were proud of their team in recent seasons. They were watching players who would go hiding when times got tough and run away from taking responsibility.
That softness seems to have been rectified this season and Pat’s look to be the only team that can stop Shamrock Rovers from winning back-to-back titles. If you ever want to know about a team’s character, then a trip to Ballybofey to face Finn Harps will give you your answer.
At the start of the season, when the fixtures get released, I always dreaded Harps away. It’s a horrible journey, travelling hours on a bus. The dressing rooms can barely fit 11 players and it’s often the case that the substitutes must wait to get changed until the starting 11 are done. With City, we used to get changed in our hotel because the dressing rooms are so bad. There’s no toilet in the changing rooms, so both teams are sharing two cubicles.
Apart from the poor facilities, Harps are a difficult team to play against. They are a physical side and will put every set-piece into the box no matter where it is in the pitch. There’s nothing nice about playing against Harps in Ballybofey.
Pat’s player Chris Forrester summed up his side’s performance perfectly, describing it as “professional”. In the past, Pat’s were a side concerned only about themselves and not the opposition. Against Harps, Stephen O’Donnell got his tactics right. It seems the penny has finally dropped with Pat’s that it’s not all about playing pretty football in every game, it’s about winning.
Their recruitment in the off-season is the reason they sit top of the table at present. For years, the club has been lacking a centre-forward and although he won’t score 20 goals a season, Ronan Coughlan has finally given them a presence up front.
His strength allows him to hold off defenders and bring others into play — a side of his game he has really worked on since I played with him at City. Coughlan knew after a few months at City that he wasn’t strong enough to have a successful career in the league. In the 2019 off-season, he worked harder than anyone else. When players, like myself, had enough after an hour-long gym session, he would stay on for extras.
Coughlan was always top of the running and we were excited about the impact he would have in the season ahead. We were shocked when he left the club and I still don’t know why it was allowed happen.
Matty Smith, one of Pat’s goalscorers last week, is another player I’ve had the pleasure of playing with.
Another excellent signing, he is a quick, sharp player with a nasty side to his game that you don’t notice watching him. I remember playing against him in an 11 v 11 in training at Waterford, when he’d been getting frustrated throughout the session. I was shielding a ball through to the goalkeeper and he kicked out at me. Up until then I thought he was a quiet lad who would get kicked all over the place by defenders, but here was a young player who had come over from Scotland and wasn’t afraid to test a senior player when things weren’t going right.
It showed me he is the type of player that isn’t going to shy away from a challenge.
I expect Pat’s to beat Longford Town tonight and a side given an outside chance of the title at the outset of the campaign will begin to look realistic challengers. The players and managers might not say it publicly, but they will be starting to believe that too.
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