General
- Thursday August 18th, 2022 @ 12:15
Match Preview: UCD Vs Saints (19/08/22)
St Patrick's Athletic will be back in league action on Friday night when they travel to Belfield to take on UCD.
Kick-off is at 7.45pm, with tickets for away fans available from The UCD Bowl and also online HERE, please note, there is no 'away tickets' online option, St Pat's fans who are buying online should purchase a general admission ticket and will then be directed to the away section of the ground on arrival on Friday.
The game will also be live on LOITV.
The Saints returned to league action on Sunday evening for the first time after their European campaign came to an end.
They welcomed Sligo Rovers to Inchicore and Serge Atayaki's 31st minute strike was enough for St Pat's to claim a crucial three points.
The result tightened their grip on 4th as they now sit four points ahead of Sligo in the race for European qualification.
Tim Clancy's side are now within six points of 3rd placed Derry City with 11 games to play.
Opposition Watch and Previous Meetings
UCD AFC come into the game having moved off the foot of the table last week thanks to a brilliant win.
They beat relegation rivals Finn Harps 2-1 in Belfield.
Filip Mihaljevic opened the scoring for the Ballybofey side in the 18th minute from the penalty spot but The Students fought back and equalised three minutes later through Donal Higgins.
Despite being reduced to 10 men when Dara Keane was shown red, UCD found the winner in the 58th minute when Evan Caffrey's stunning strike from distance flew into the top corner.
Tomorrow night will be the 4th and final meeting of the teams this season and The Saints will be looking to keep up their 100% record against UCD so far in 2022.
The sides first met in March with goals from Mark Doyle and Eoin Doyle secured a 2-0 victory at Richmond Park.
A late Mark Dignam OG was the difference between the sides in a 2-1 Saints' win the last time they visited The Bowl in April.
Colm Whelan had out Andy Myler's me in front, but Ben McCormack's rebound after Eoin Doyle's penalty was saved and then Dignam's OG from a curling McCormack corner was enough for Pat's to make the trip back to Inchicore with the points.
Their most recent meeting came in June when Eoin Doyle's double was enough to secure a 2-1 win.
Alex Nolan did hit back late on, ,but it was too little too late.
View From The Dugout
Manager Tim Clancy has been giving us his thoughts ahead of tomorrow's derby:
"The three games we have played against UCD so far this season have been tight affairs.
The last time we were in Belfield, it took a late own goal for us to win and they have had a great result against Finn Harps last weekend.
Similar to ourselves (against Sligo), they went down to 10 men and showed real discipline, hard work and fitness to get the win.
They are obviously in a scrap for survival and we are in a scrap to try and finish as high up the table as possible so we are expecting it to be a very close game. We want to build on the very good result we had against Sligo last week.
Going down to 10 men especially a few days after the European game, we really need to try and back that performance up with a win so that is the most important thing and we are all looking forward to it."
Team-news: Mark Doyle (suspended), David Odumosu (ankle) and Adam Murphy (hamstring) will all miss the game at The UCD Bowl.
Tickets: Tickets for away fans will be available from The UCD Bowl and also online HERE, please note, there is no 'away tickets' online option, St Pat's fans who are buying online should purchase a general admission ticket and will then be directed to the away section of the ground on arrival on Friday.
LOITV: The game will be live on LOITV with kick off at 7.45pm, LOITV match passes cost 7 Euro.
Updates: Alternatively, you can catch updates across all of our social media channels on Friday evening.
Photo credit: Matthew Lysaght Sports Pics
