General
- Wednesday February 22nd, 2006 @ 23:10
Pats Pay The Penalty In Tough Friendly
Chkalovets-1936 Novosibirsk 1-0 St Patrick's Athletic,
Antequera Golf Hotel, Antequera, Andalucia, Spain
Wednesday 22nd February 2006, 4:20pm (local time).
A second half penalty was enough to separate the Saints from their Russian first division opposition in today's friendly which marked the end of the four-day intensive training session in southern Spain.
It was route one stuff for the Russians. On 60 minutes, a long kick out was mis-headed by Darragh Maguire and with Stephen Quigley subsequently finding himself trying to mark two players he bundled over one player in the box for the Spanish referee to award the Russian's second penalty of the match. This time they made no mistake from the spot.
With the temperature in this area of southern Spain barely reaching 6C the encounter was heated up by some hard tackling from the Russians, with two of their players picking up yellow cards in the second half for rash tackles and many more lucky not to have their names noted by the referee.
The first half had hinted at much better things for the Saints. The starting lineup of Ryan, Brennan, Frost, Caffrey, Maguire, Reilly, O'Connor, Mulcahy, Keegan, Molloy and Rutherford settled quickly into the game.
Chkalovets created the first real chance of note after 9 minutes, hitting the post with one of their few chances of the first half. The Saints quickly hit back with Trevor Molloy firing in a cross on 12 minutes only for Paul Keegan to see his effort come back off the post.
