Galway United shocked Limerick with a massive 3-1 victory at Eamonn Deacy Park thanks to strikes from Padraic Cunningham, Ronan Murray and Eoin McCormack to give the Tribesmen’s survival hopes a shot in the arm. While the result means that United re
Galway United shocked Limerick with a massive 3-1 victory at Eamonn Deacy Park thanks to strikes from Padraic Cunningham, Ronan Murray and Eoin McCormack to give the Tribesmen’s survival hopes a shot in the arm. While the result means that United remain in the bottom three, it was a result manager Shane Keegan was more than happy with. “Thrilled with the result,” Keegan beamed to the huddle of reporters following the match. “I thought we could have been 3-0 down before we scored. [Rodrigo] Tosi has missed a sitter, Lee Grace has done phenomenally well to get back and block Chiedozie [Ogbene] when it looked like he was going to lash it into the back of the net. Dean Clarke has hit the ball right at Conor Winn. To say we were riding our luck is putting it mildly,” he said. The Blues created their fair share of chances, particularly in the opening 45 minutes, but Galway were in far better form in front of goal for once – an improvement Keegan was pleased to see. “The one thing I’ve been asking for is to be more clinical, more ruthless, more efficient. Did their ‘keeper have a save to make? I wouldn’t have thought so. I’d say we had probably three shots on target in the game and the ball’s gone into the back of the net three times. That’s brilliant, you’d take that every day.” The standout moment of the match was no doubt Murray’s 35th-minute thunderbolt to open the scores that took everyone by surprise from great distance, but Keegan wasn’t at all taken aback by the audacious effort. “Nothing surprises me with Murray at the moment, to be honest,” he said. “It’s a fantastic strike. He’s probably the only person in the team, one of the only people in the league apart from [Patrick] McEleney, who thinks to try and do something like that.” Meanwhile, Limerick manager Neil McDonald was disappointed with his side’s poor finishing, lamenting a series of golden opportunities. “We’ve had a couple of really good chances and we haven’t put them in the back of the net and that’s what normally happens.” Sitting just inside the top half of the table, Limerick fans won’t want to see their side dragged into the relegation scrap with more results like this, but McDonald isn’t worries about slipping into the bottom three any time soon. “I don’t think we’re in a relegation battle – we’re trying to go up the top but results like this and performances that happened have to be better to win games and certainly when the chances come along, we have to put them in the back of the net,” he concluded. Trevor Murray
