The Dugout

Alan Mathews

A very good evening to everyone and a very warm welcome to the management, players, officials and fans of Shelbourne FC, a club I had some great times with as a player and manager.

Tonight is our second League game of the season and unusually we are at home again, hopefully we will see a similar atmosphere to last week’s game which was at times really electric. The ground was in great shape with people continuing to work tirelessly behind the scenes, ensuring the team is in the best possible place to perform on any given week. Once again I would like to thank all our sponsors, patrons, and volunteers who do so much to support or club. We are really lucky to have so many talented people working together to give the team a platform for success.

On the pitch last week’s game against Derry was a really tough one to start with and the lads showed great resilience and persistence to gain a well-deserved point with a late equaliser.

We played well for some periods of the game against a very good opponent, and while there are plenty of areas for improvement and development from us, overall a point was a fair result.

Last week was we had a number of guys make their debut’s for the club Noah Lewis, Tommy Lonergan, Vlad Kreida, Jake Mulraney, Conor Carty. They all made a positive start to their careers with us, and they all received a great Inchicore welcome from you as well, which will spur them on as they now know you will get behind them for the season ahead.

Tonight’s opponents are a Club we have a lot of respect for and will no doubt be looking to build on last season where they came up from the First Division and went all the way to the FAI Cup final in addition to securing a very comfortable League position.

We go into tonight’s game confident that we can build on last week’s performance and the players can take heart knowing that we will have the support of a passionate home crowd behind

We believe we have the right mixture of youth and experience in addition to a hunger and desire to succeed within the group that will drive us on this season and help us achieve our ambitions.

To help us achieve on the pitch we can only do it with the support of you our wonderful fans, we want Friday nights to be special in Inchicore and with your backing from the terraces we will try and play a brand of football you can get behind and enjoy.

Thanks for getting behind the team and I hope you enjoy the game.

Thanks, Alan Mathews, Technical Director, St Patrick's Athletic FC.