Match Preview | UCD Away | Should be 3 pts!

The Belfield Bowl, always a tough place to visit!

Morning all, it’s been miserable all week weather wise so hopefully the poxy rain stays away for tonight’s game against UCD. We take on the students on the back of a great run and a convincing win against Shels last week. The Belfield Toliet Bowl is always a tough place to go regardless how UCD are performing and as we saw last year, even when leading by a couple of goals, you can’t rest on your laurels as you can be sucker punched.

Squad news is that Crowley is still a week away before returning and the usual suspects of Brady and apparently Jack Flynn are injured, where are all the “Fabio is always injured” brigade now? Anyway, other than that we have the same squad available as against Shels. I’d expect Mick to start with the same first 11 again, they played extremely well last week and were comfortable everywhere on the pitch. UCD are not as dangerous as Shels and if we put in a performance like we did last week then we should come away with the 3 points.

Midfield is where we’re winning our games this season, RB will need to influential again and if he drives forward like he usually does then Gannon and GB will have plenty of targets when whipping balls into the box. Foley is another player who can play an important role tonight as if he can improve a bit on his passing from last week then he’ll be in a position to really setup plenty of attacks. His passing over long distances was poor enough, so if he goes for the simple ball instead tonight then we’ll see a better performance I reckon. Up front Mick will probably go with the same starting 2 as last week, as they both played very well, despite not scoring. In saying that, Hynes did very well when he came on and scored a nice goal and also SB probably would have scored if he wasn’t hauled down by Paisley, so there are options there and it’s brilliant to see such a strong bench. None of the subs would weaken the team when changes are made.

So all in all it’s looking good for tonight, as not only are we playing very well but our away record is excellent as well. We always seem to play well away from home and the bigger pitch at the Toliet Bowl should help us as we like to score plenty of goals when playing on a bigger pitch, IE. Cork, Bray, UCD(2011). The Students have been pretty inconsistent this season so it’s hard to know what type of performance they’ll put in. They’re a young side, as always, but I didn’t even know how young they were as they’re missing two players as they’re away with the Irish schoolboys team!! If we can’t beat a bunch of kids then we may as well give up! They’ve scored plenty of goals this season but they’ve conceded plenty as well. So if our defence can stay tight then I can’t see why we can’t put at least 2 past them tonight. UCD are missing 5 players in total, whether they’re important players, I’ve no idea, but hopefully they’ll be affected by it.

So overall I reckon we’ll win, easily and if results go our way we could be sitting top of the table for the first time since 2007. My prediction 3-0 Drogs.

As usual here is my weekly accumulator, it’s been a disaster this season so far, not a sausage won as there has been some whacky results, but hopefully this lot can make a return. I’m going to be a little conservative this week;

Sligo V Pats – Draw

Athlone V Longford – Longford win

Craptown v Bohs – Draw

Limerick V Waterford – Limerick win

Mervue V Finn Harps – Harps win

UCD V Drogs – Drogs win

Mons V Bray – Bray win

Rovers V Derry – Rovers win

Shels V Cork – Draw

Youths V STD Galway – Youths win

10 game accumulator with Paddypower will get you a return of €3,125.87 on a €1 bet. Not likely to happen but I’m an optimist and most of those results are not beyond the realms of possibility. Other bets with PP are 19/1 for us to win 3-0. For us to simply win were 11/10. For first goal scorer, you can get Mulvenna at 5/1 and last week’s first goal scorer Gannon is a whopping 22/1 to score first, might stick a few bob on that.

That’s it from me today, hopefully the weather holds up and we bring a decent crowd down to south Dublin tonight. Drogs Live Radio will be commentating live on the game, so happy days there and lets all hope that we come away with another 3 points tonight.