General
- Sunday June 4th, 2023 @ 16:00
PREVIEW: St Pat's Vs Derry City (05/06/23)
Richmond Park will host the meeting and 4th against 2nd in the League of Ireland Premier Division on Bank Holiday Monday as St Patrick's Athletic welcome Derry City.
Home tickets will this game are expected to sell out, all St Patrick's Athletic fans are advised to get their tickets online HERE in advance to avoid disappointment.
The game will also be live on Virgin Media 2 TV with kick-off at the earlier than usual time of 6.45pm.
The Saints come into the match in their best run of form this season, they've won five of their last six matches and are just four points behind leaders Shamrock Rovers and three points off 2nd placed Derry.
Their most recent victory came at The UCD Bowl on Friday night, when a Noah Lewis double and a third goal in six matches for Conor Carty helped secure a 3-1 win, all three goals were headers and all were supplied by brilliant Ben McCormack corners.
Eight current or former St Patrick's Athletic Academy players were in the squad on Friday night, including six teenagers, the youngest being Mason Melia (15) and the oldest being Jamie Lennon (25)
Four started the win at UCD, Jamie Lennon (25), Sam Curtis, (17), Adam Murphy (18), Ben McCormack (20) with two more coming on, Tommy Lonergan (19) and Mason Melia (15).
Three of the eight will start their Leaving Cert on Wednesday, Adam Murphy, James Byrne and Darius Lipsiuc, with Mason doing his Junior Cert
Jon Daly's side are the in form team in the league and they'll be looking to beat The Candystripes for the first time this season.
Ruaidhri Higgins' side drew 0-0 with Shelbourne on Friday, former St Pat's goalkeeper Brian Maher saved a penalty in that game to ensure his side a point.
City had gone into last weekend top of the table, but a 1-0 defeat in Sligo and that draw against Shels coupled with Shamrock Rovers 2-0 victory over Dundalk, means Derry are second, three ahead of St Pat's and just a point adrift of Rovers.
Head To Head
These teams faced off on the opening night of the season at a sold out Richmond Park, Joe Redmond's late equaliser cancelled out Jordan McEneff's 32nd minute opener as they shared the spoils.
Their second meeting came at the Ryan McBride Brandywell, Derry won it 2-0 courtesy of a Ben Doherty penalty and a Colm Whelan header.
This will be the 113th league game between St Patrick's Athletic and Derry City, their records are identical with 37 wins each and 38 draws, the winners will have the bragging rights tomorrow night.
A number of former St Pat's players could feature for Derry tomorrow, Brian Maher, Adam O'Reilly and Cian Kavanagh are all ex Saints.
"It's a massive game, we want to keep our positive run going - Daly:
Jon Daly has won five of his six matches in charge of St Pat's, the only defeat coming against Shamrock Rovers at Tallaght Stadium.
The Manager chatted to our YouTube channel after Friday's victory in Belfield:
"We want to try to stay in a positive run of form, we've got a massive game on Monday against Derry that we need to try to get points from before we go to Drogheda where we'll be trying to finish off strongly before we have a little break.
The league is very very tight, a couple of wins and you can shoot up the table and a couple of defeats and you are dragged back by the other teams so it's important that we keep focused on one game at a time and dont look too far ahead.
We were fully focused on Friday (against UCD), that's done now, the boys were in for recovery, gym and video analysis on Saturday and trained well at Richmond this morning, our full attention is now on Derry and we'll be doing everything we can to get the three points from that game.
We have a few injury issues from both before and after the UCD game, before we make any decision on them, we are giving them as much time as possible to make the game."
Conor Carty added: "We know Derry are going to be a tough side to play against, we've had good games against them so far this season and we've been doing well at home this season so we are looking forward to Monday, we'll be aiming to give them a good game,"
Watch Conor's full interview on our Youtube channel.
Team News:
Joe Redmond (hamstring), Tom Grivosti (knee ACL) and Jake Mulraney (suspended - 2 matches remaining following red card v Dundalk) will all miss the game.
Image credit: Inpho Sports
Be sure to visit the St Pat's store and check out our Umbro League of Ireland merchandise.
