Our European hopes took a big blow on Friday night as we were beat 3-0 in Richmond Park by St Patrick’s Athletic. On first viewing the 3-0 scoreline looks like a comprehensive and comfortable victory for St Pats but in truth it was anything but that. Believe it or not it was one of our best performances of the season and we controlled the game for most parts of it.

St Pats started the game well in the first ten minutes, but once we got to grips with it the rest of the half was all Waterford pressure bar two moments in the half which were crucial to the outcome of the game.

DEFENSIVE ERRORS 

We made two defensive errors in the half and were punished on both occasions and against the run of play we were 2-0 down heading into the half time break.

The second-half followed the same pattern as the first-half did with us controlling it but unfortunately, we conceded a late goal while we were chasing the game to lose 3-0. Even though we played so well in the game ultimately it was still really disappointed that we lost the game especially when some results went our way so we could have made ground or pulled away from others in the race for European football.

St Pats were clinical with their chances and are a very good side under Stephen Kenny. They will be a force to be reckoned with next season for sure and I have a feeling that they will recruit well again in the off season if the summer window is anything to go by.

We need to bounce back as soon as we can and there is no better time to do that than on Friday night when we welcome Galway United to the RSC in Waterford.

Galway have had an excellent season in their first season back in the Premier League since 2017 and like us they are battling for a place in the top four and possible European football next season for the first time in nearly 40 years.

Their manager John Caufield has done a wonderful job at Galway in the four years he has been at the club. In fact, he has done a great job in Irish football since he first took over at Cork City in 2013. In his time at Cork, he won a league title was runner-up on four occasions and won two FAI Cup title while being runner-up in another two.

THE BUSINESS END

The funny thing is that even though he has been successful at two different clubs he still gets criticised by lots of people which is very unfair in my opinion. His style of play has been criticised but there is more than one way to win a soccer match, and it is all about winning so in my eyes he deserves so much credit for the job he has done.

This is the business end of the season and every game in the league has implications for other teams. At the bottom of the table Dundalk and Drogheda United are scrapping for their lives and Bohemians have been dragged into that battle after Friday night defeat at Dalymount to Drogheda.

The gap between Drogheda and Bohs has been reduced to five points, but Drogheda have only lost one game in their last ten in all competitions, so they are putting up a great battle and also have a FAI Cup semi-final to look forward to in two weeks’ time against Wexford FC.

Bohemians have some huge games ahead of them starting with a Dublin derby which was played last night against Shamrock Rovers and then to follow that they play the other side who need points on the board quickly if they are going to starve off relegation Dundalk.

BIGGER WORRIES 

Dundalk have bigger worries on their plate than possibly being relegated and thankfully there is a glimmer of hope for them with their new owner John Temple who took over the club last week although there are by no means out of the woods yet.

I hope that they can get a buyer for the club who can keep the club going for the future if Temple isn’t able to fund it beyond this season although he deserves a lot of credit for putting his money up to keep them afloat for the rest of the season.

The old ownership is still involved, and the reports are not a positive as you would want them to be but hopefully those reports aren’t accurate and Dundalk as a football club will be around for a lot longer than we thought they were going to be this time last week.