Graham Burke comes off the bench to earn victory for Shamrock Rovers

Second-half substitute Graham Burke popped up with a crucial winning goal for champions Shamrock Rovers as they got over their midweek European defeat with a hard-earned win over Waterford for a second time at the RSC this season in the SSE Airtricity Men's Premier Division to move up to third.

The Tallaght outfit showed no ill-effects from their exit from the Champions League in midweek as they took up much of the early running with some clinical passing down the left yielding the breakthrough goal on eight minutes.

Jack Byrne started the move that saw him spot the run of Darragh Nugent, who in turn fed the ball into the feet of Cory O’Sullivan and in his fourth league appearance for the Hoops, he drilled a left-footed finish for his first goal of the campaign to the far corner past a helpless Louis Jones.

Although Dean McMenamy could have had the immediate response for Waterford at the other end two minutes later, he skied a shot wide of the target before Jones was called into action to make two saves in denying both Byrne and Dylan Watts.

Aaron Greene had a big opportunity to double the Rovers lead on 38 minutes when he raced onto a long ball out of defence that wasn’t dealt with by Kacper Radkowski, but the centre forward couldn’t direct his left-footed shot on target before Rowan McDonald was off target with a shot at the end a minute later.

The second half saw Waterford up the tempo in their play early doors, with Christie Pattisson feeding the ball into the feet of McMenamy out on the left on 50 minutes, but his snap left-footed shot cleared Pohls’ crossbar and within two minutes they were level.

Ryan Burke’s long throw was headed clear to McDonald, who hooked a left-footed ball into the area where Pohls failed to