St Patrick's Athletic sweep past Shelbourne to open season in style

St Patrick's Athletic cruised past a doughty Shelbourne in an absorbing Dublin derby before a sold-out Tolka.

Tim Clancy's Saints hinted at a title challenge last week in the President's Cup and did so again but Damien Duff can look back on his first senior game as Shels manager with plenty to ponder, much of it positive.

A stunning strike by Darragh Burns preceded a Mark Doyle goal to seal the deal, Shels missing crucial chances in between that their endeavours merited, before Jay McClelland made it three.

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Tactically, Clancy did his homework on the Reds and it paid off.

It was a mixture of high-class fare and such frantic football as befitting a game to end the off-season and begin Duff's life in the dugout. He will have better nights and, no doubt, Clancy told him as much as the lights went out in Drumcondra.

It felt like freezing temperatures, a throwback to the many nights of winter football that Tolka Park regulars bore witness to, including this writer, who lived across the road in his first year of College.

It seemed as though all of the main players in Irish football were here, including the PFAI's Stephen McGuinness, who recalled that his first memory of a football stadium was seeing then European champions Liverpool play Home Farm in Tolka Park.

As it is now, Liverpool and the Premier League have a hold on this country but things are changing and Duff's arrival on the scene has been a Godsend for the game. Well over half an hour before kick-off here, fathers were seated beside sons, keeping them warm as they could, perhaps regaling them with tales of Tolka.

The tea ladies were accepting card payment, one of the few signs of modernity in a ground long weathered; one, nevertheless, which Shels fans,