General
- Thursday April 13th, 2023 @ 13:07
Preview: Bohs Vs St Pat's (14/04/23)
A sold out Dalymount Park will host the clash of Bohemians and St Patrick's Athletic on Friday night.
The away allocation of 450 tickets sold out within minutes with home tickets also gone, so the only way to watch the game (if you don't have a ticket) is live on LOITV.
St Pat's come into the match in their best form of the season, following their 2-2 draw at Shamrock Rovers before the international break, Tim Clancy's side have won three in a row and sit fourth in the table after the first series, just a point off second place.
The Saints scored ten and conceded just one in those wins against UCD, Cork City and Drogheda United, they'll be hoping to continue that positive form at Dalymount.
Monday's win at Weavers Park brought the first series to a close, St Pat's have won four, drawn two and lost three of their opening nine matches, scoring 15 times and conceding 13, meaning they've collected 14 points so far, the exact same total from their first series last season.
Head To Head
These teams have met once already this season with Bohemians winning 2-0 at Richmond Park just over a month ago, Jonathan Afolabi and Dean Williams got the goals for The Gypsies.
That was one of seven wins for Bohs in their opening nine games, their only defeats have come at the hands of Shelbourne and Shamrock Rovers.
Declan Devine's side are top of the table on 21 points, six ahead of second placed Derry and seven in front of tomorrow's opponents.
Tomorrow's game will be the 188th league meeting of two of Ireland's most famous clubs, Pat's have won 72 times, Bohs have been victorious 62 times with 53 draws.
The Inchicore men won three of the four league meetings last season.
Bohemians won the first game 1-0 at Dalymount before three Pat's victories, 3-0 at Richmond Park last May thanks to a Tunde Owolabi hat-trick, 3-1 at Dalymount in August with Barry Cotter, Chris Forrester and Adam O'Reilly on target before another 3-1 victory in October in Inchicore, Serge Atakayi, Mark Doyle and Ben McCormack got the goals.
"These are the games you want to play in!" - Clancy
Manager Tim Clancy reflected on the recent good form and previewed the game against the league leaders, you can watch his full interview on our Youtube channel.
"Our last few performances have been really pleasing and we'll be aiming to take that into the game tomorrow night.
If you include the game at Shamrock Rovers, we've scored 12 goals across the period which is really good, we've kept two clean sheets too, we want to try to keep that going in what will be a tough Dublin Derby, it's one that we want to go to try and win.
Declan Devine has had a brilliant start to his time as Bohemians Manager, they've had a massive turnover in players too so to get them purring so early in the season is really good, they've got lots of very good players and lots of energy in their team, they've had seven wins so far so we'll be aiming to go to Dalymount on Friday and stop the run that they are on and continue our good one."
"The support has been great, it really pumps you up and gets you going!" - McClelland
Jay McClelland is in his fourth season as a Saint, making him the 3rd longest serving player in the current squad, if he plays tomorrow night, it will be his 70th appearance in the famous red and white or yellow as the case may be tomorrow night!
The winger has been in top form since coming into the side recently and spoke to Jamie Moore at Dublin Fit Club ahead of Friday's Derby, you can also watch that full interview on Youtube now.
"I've really enjoyed being in the team for the last three games and contributing to the good run of form.
Our supporters have been absolutely brilliant since I've been at the club and there is a really buzz around the club and the whole league at the moment, it's been unbelievable.
You can really feel the fans helping you and it really pumps you up and gets you going, we'll have 450 fans at Dalymount for what will be a difficult game against a good team who are on top of the league at the moment.
We come into it in good form ourselves and hopefully we'll be able to put in another good performance and make it another win if we can."
Team News:
Danny Rogers (thumb), Tom Grivosti (hamstring), Harry Brockbank (calf) continue to miss out through injury, Captain Joe Redmond is awaiting results of the extent of his injury picked on Monday, while winger Jake Mulraney was taken off as a precaution in Drogheda and will be assessed before tomorrow's game.
Image credit: Sportsfile
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